More Than Heroes
by qwanderer
Summary: Sif is first and foremost a warrior of Asgard, and that will never change. But Midgard can and will change everything else. This takes Sif rather by surprise. - This story is part of the Midnight Mystery universe and contains mentions of slash. All lemons are het (and hot).
1. Names Languages Arts Tools

**More Than Heroes**

**Chapter 1: Names; Languages; Arts; Tools**

Heimdall burst into the hall.

"My king. An alien force known as the Kree are invading Midgard. Thor asks that we send Sif and the Warriors Three to help fight them."

Sif looked up with interest at the gatekeeper, and then at Odin. The Allfather's gaze swept the room, and then he spoke.

"I leave the choice to the four of you, but I think I know your minds well enough to say, fare well. Protect Midgard. Return with new tales to tell when next you feast in this hall."

Sif stood, nodding at Odin. "Thank you, Allfather. We will." The Three rose as well, and they followed Heimdall out of the hall.

* * *

When Thor had come back to Asgard with Loki and the Tesseract, he told the story of the battle against the Chitauri and the five warriors who fought beside Thor, calling themselves the Avengers.

A man with an eyepatch handed Sif a device to put on her ear, so that she could hear the voices of the heroes of Earth fighting in the chaos around them.

"Hulk, get up on that ship! Bring it down!"

Sif watched the green creature leap. She recognized that name from the tales.

Ships poured down from the skies, into an area which was full of large, featureless rectangular structures and thin metal latticework things. The man in blue who had directed the Hulk upward stood his ground, taking the energy bolts on his shield while he directed the others away. "Hawkeye, you take one of the cranes. Spidey, you got him? Then look out for targets exiting the ships. Thor, Iron Man, get up there and stop the ships as high as you can."

"Will do, Cap," one of them replied as Cap paused for breath. The Three were already wading into the fight on the ground, pounding away at the ships. Sif followed.

The man in blue continued. "Rose, stay back! These guys are too much for you. You'll do the most good guiding the evacuation."

"Oh, you don't have to tell me twice!" said a voice that was melodious but thick with irony. "These warehouses seem mostly empty, though, thank God." A woman in a short pink gown and black boots kicked in the door of one of the buildings and slipped inside.

"Mystery, you use your eyes. Take any opportunity when you see it, and let me know if these things have a particular weak point."

There was no more talking for a while as ships exploded above them and flaming debris rained down; ships exploded on the ground as Sif and the Three overwhelmed them with blows; but they just kept coming. The Helicarrier must have been nearby, because bombers appeared in the sky out of nowhere and took out the ships even higher than where Thor, Hulk and Iron Man were working. But none of them were even close to the eight big ships hovering far above, only two of which seemed to be sending out their smaller fighters. Stopping them from gaining a hold on the ground was the more immediate problem. This was going to be a long fight.

Ships continued to find their way to the ground, and Kree warriors poured out of those that managed to land safely. Hawk took out several of these, and Spidey immobilized several more with a ropelike weapon that intrigued Sif. A woman in black with deep red hair appeared and shot these helpless Kree in the head, all but one, who she dragged off.

Over the comm, a voice, probably the archer's, commented, "There's something creepy about seeing you spiders work together."

"Oh, Widow is creepy enough all on her own," a surprisingly young-sounding voice replied.

Despite their best efforts, the number of blue-skinned Kree on the ground increased. Cap and Widow were neck deep in them but seemed extremely skilled at working together in melee. Sif and the Three, similarly, fought in their own coordinated knot of battle. A blue and gold armored man, possibly the Mystery the Captain had spoken to before, popped in and out, striking a blow and then moving instantaneously to another spot.

In response to an unheard signal, the Kree on the ground all suddenly retreated. There was a bare two seconds of confusion before a glowing shield rose up and encircled them. At this, the ships in the air stopped and retreated upwards again as well.

The Avengers and the Three all tried their hand at breaking through the shield, but to no avail. Hulk roared and beat his fists against it.

In the lull, a conversation began.

"So who are the Kree?" Cap asked. "Why are they in New Jersey? What do they want?"

A smooth voice replied. "In general, the Kree want only to conquer and rule. Specifically? The Kree and I...let's just say my former associations in their corner of space may have something to do with it."

"So they could be after you. Great." Cap was trying to keep annoyance out of his voice.

Hawkeye's voice came over the comms. "M, you know I believe you've changed, but sometimes I think you're more trouble than you're worth. No offense."

"None taken, Hawk," replied the smooth, oddly familiar voice.

Then the shield began to expand.

"Looks like it's time to break out the big guns," said a cocky voice that Sif could now identify as Iron Man. She looked to the gold and red armor to see a panel slide open on his arm. His other hand reached inside to pull out an impossibly large oblong thing, which then caught fire and leapt into the air, up to the eight huge ships hovering in the sky. It hit one of them with a small thud. The ship began to fall slowly out of the sky.

"Stark, where the hell have you been stowing those things, what the hell are they, and do you have any more?" Sif recognized the voice as that of the one-eyed man who had given her the earpiece.

"In Malibu, actually, and they're remotely Jarvis-guided NNEMP bombs powered by marginally unstable arc reactors. I've got a few more where that came from."

He reached his hand twice more into the impossible void, a portal, she guessed, to wherever this place called Malibu was. The second device took down one of the ships, but the third hit a shield similar to the one on the ground, and the ship stayed up. The remaining six ships were now surrounded by the glowing shields.

"Iron Man, Thor, you'd better go make sure those two whales land over water," Cap called. "In the meantime, I'm guessing that the Kree can't fire weapons out of those shields as much as we can't fire in. Otherwise they'd have been up from the start. So keep those bombs ready. Anyone got any more ideas for stopping this shield from expanding further?"

"Actually I do," said the smooth voice associated with the blue armor. A similar portal opened on his arm and he took out another of the oblong devices.

"We know that won't penetrate the shield," Cap objected. "Plus, Mystery, that's a bomb, right? How close do we want to be to it when it goes?"

"True, but it will take out the machinery generating the shield, if I can get the bomb inside, which I believe I can."

"Then do it," Cap said.

Mystery blinked out of existence, taking the device with him. Then he returned without it.

"I recommend that mortals get behind something," he said. "I am unsure how quickly the shield will drop once the device goes off."

Cap stayed where he was, but turned his small buckler toward the glowing field. Hawkeye and Spidey left their perches to crouch behind buildings. Widow was out of sight somewhere, as was Rose. "Jarvis, detonate," said Mystery, and the shield held for a fraction of a second, then fell. The air vibrated dully for a moment. Then melee began again.

A surprising number of Kree had survived the blast and were still fighting, but now Sif had no doubt that they would triumph. She threw herself into the battle.

Then one of the falling ships exploded as it approached the ground. Burning wreckage flew far and wide.

"Shit," Rose swore. "There's still people there. M&M, I might need help with this."

Now Iron Man, Mystery and Rose were doing damage control at that crash site.

"Rose Witch! Look, your four o'clock, that building is falling!" M snapped.

The woman in the pink gown turned, threw up her hands, and roots enveloped the tower.

"Good," Mystery said. "Now, evacuation. Tony and I will cover you."

"You got it, M&M, sweetie!" Rose called over the comm. "Why does your code name have to remind me of chocolate? I'm starved, we've been at this for hours!"

This M&M's voice was strangely familiar, but his blue and gold armor and the way he fought using the strange green light on his chest were not. He used jets of green light to take down the stray Kree survivor of the crash.

Thor managed to get the other large ship to land in the water, where it sank like a stone. When several Kree survivors bobbed to the surface, gasping, Thor shot a bolt of lightning into the sea, and the figures sank again.

"That's...kind of disturbing, Thor," said Spidey over the comms.

At some point the other six large ships had disappeared out of the sky, probably retreating.

Finally all the Kree they could find were dead or encased in spider silk. Everyone was in various states of exhaustion, including Hulk, whose roars had been reduced to grumbles. He plodded over to where several of the Avengers had collapsed onto the paving, and lay down beside them.

The one-eyed man approached them.

"SHIELD will take over from here. You all go do whatever it is Avengers do when they're not avenging, which is all in all something I don't intend to worry about."

Tony was drinking a cold beverage of some kind. "Have I ever told you how much I adore arc pods?" he said in M&M's direction. "Also, I weigh far too much right now. I need to be on the moon." He took another sip from the bottle he held and looked contemplative. "No, wait, I changed my mind. Food is more important. Let's go back to the tower and have food."

"That's a great idea," the Captain said, perking up. "Thor, your friends should come too. They helped us defeat the Kree, the least we can do is feed them"

"My friends!" Thor called to them. "Come, we will feast in the halls of Stark!"

So they traveled through the city to the tower. New York was an even stranger place than New Mexico had been. Mostly there was more of everything.

"And why are all your places called new?" Sif asked. "What happened to the old places?"

"They were boring," the Man of Iron answered. "We left to find where the party had gone. And look. It's right here."

He gestured with his arm as they left the moving box, and Sif stared in wonder at the view.

Thor and the Three joined her at one of the broad windows. Hogun gave an awed chuckle. Volstagg gaped. Fandral exclaimed, "What a wonder this city is!"

"Yes, it is," Thor replied, "and especially so if you think of the fact that the Chitauri attacked on this very spot, less than two years ago. They've rebuilt quickly, well, and with high spirits." Thor was unusually quiet when he spoke again. "Mortals...humans...impress me more with each passing day."

Sif looked hard at him.

"Is Jane well?" she asked.

"Very well," he answered, smiling, but still slightly subdued.

"And you? How fare you here on Midgard?" Sif went to lay her hand on Thor's arm, as she once would have, but stopped. Something in his manner told her it would be too much.

"I miss Asgard; I miss all of you," Thor said.

"Well, with the Bifrost repaired, you have but to ask and Heimdall will open the gate for you," Fandral said encouragingly.

Thor smiled, and then sighed. "Time," he began, and then was at a loss as to how to continue. After a moment he said, "Time is not an ally to me now, it seems. I stay here that I might spend every moment possible with my darling Jane, and yet she..." Thor trailed off again.

"What is it? Is she no longer amenable to your courtship?" Volstagg asked.

"She is amenable, if I am to believe her words on the subject," Thor continued. "Yet, given that, her actions are discouraging. She seems to care more for her work than she does for me. I have discussed it with the other Avengers and they all inform me that this is quite normal for a woman of Midgard, and that I should not let it bother me. But...," and Thor's voice was perilously close to breaking here, "there is so very little _time._

Sif's eyes pricked with tears to see the prince, her oldest friend, so affected.

"That is unjust of her," Sif said. "If this Jane will not give you her time, why should you give her yours?"

"Oh, Sif," Thor said, eyes turning to meet hers. "You, out of all warriors, and you, out of all maidens, should know that that is untrue. Those who love a cause, a task, a good work, those who fight and strive to do those things that they are meant to do, no matter how hard the struggle, are more worthy of love, not less."

Sif only blinked up at him, her vision distorted.

Thor made as if to touch her, and then stopped short as well. Then he cleared his throat.

"All of the Avengers have tried to help me with this problem, but I fear it is not a simple question with a simple answer. One piece of advice struck me especially. The Captain - Stephen - told me that the worst thing I could do would be to make her choose. That even if she does love me more than the work, she could never be happy with someone who had taken that work away from her."

Sif thought.

"That is very wise," she said.

Thor continued in the barest whisper. "I never asked you to choose."

"But I did choose," she answered, only slightly louder. "I truly never wanted to be your wife."

They stood, not touching, turned towards each other but looking out over the city now.

"Sif, come look at this!" a cry came from behind them. Volstagg beckoned them enthusiastically. "They have a way of telling how done the meat is without cutting into it!"

Sif snorted with laughter, which was a rather messy proposition at the moment. Thor handed her a soft square of paper to clean her face with, and the two of them headed over to the place where the Three and the Avengers were congregated.

This whole place was odd, the shapes of the room simple but adequate in size, and the materials plain but subtly rich. Sif had been informed that Stark was the closest thing there was to a prince in this area, and that this was one of his favorite feasting halls. She supposed to herself that the view must have much to do with that. But as she saw the Avengers cooking in a kitchen open to the rest of the hall, she realized that there were many things about this place and its feast customs that she was completely failing to understand.

Stark himself was pouring drinks, and he apparently had as many kinds of alcohol as the Bifrost had facets. The one they called Hulk when he was green (and apparently Bruce or Doctor Banner when he wasn't) was blending a large bowl of leaves with some kind of oily liquid. The Captain - or Stephen, she supposed - was cooking meat on a hot iron surface. He stuck a small metal skewer into each portion of meat, then took note of the end of the device.

"What color do you like your beef to be on the inside, when it's cooked perfectly?" Stephen asked her.

Sif just stared. This man was a war leader, a warrior and a hero, and here he was cooking food for his own feast. Banner opened an oven and took out a tray of crispy spiced potato slices, prodding them to judge their texture. She looked back to the Captain, who was still regarding her curiously.

"I recommend that you request your meat medium rare," Thor said from behind her. "It will be pink, and the meat will undoubtedly be tender. Stark always receives the best parts of every cow here."

"Well, not _every_ cow," Tony disagreed. "New Yorkers can eat a fuckton of beef. Also sometimes I eat at Burger King with the rest of the rabble, so I've eaten my fair share of the worst parts too."

Tony had finished pouring drinks and was now hovering behind the Captain and Doctor Banner.

"Cap, honey, you _know_ how I like my steak," he told Stephen, and winked. The Captain just rolled his eyes, going back to his work, and Stark moved on to where the two mages were discussing their craft.

Sif thought she had spotted blue skin when the male mage flitted by in battle, and had thought perhaps he was a defected Kree. Now she could see that M&M, as he had been called, had darker skin and red eyes, almost the exact coloration of a Jotunn. But he was far too small, and clearly more civilized than any giant. She frowned in thought.

"What d'ya think, Josh?" the one called Rose asked him. "Could we build some pre-made healing spells? You know I'm crap at doing them from scratch."

"You need practice, Darcy," the blue Avenger replied.

Ah, Darcy. Sif recognized her now, but she hadn't been a mage before, had she?

Darcy spoke to the blue man again. "Well, yeah, maybe, but, A. I don't have time, and B. humans aren't quite as resilient as you immortal aliens. I'd be terrified to screw up every time I tried anything."

He sighed. "I can put something together for you, but you have to promise me that you will _practice._ You have a talent for this, if you would only cultivate that talent."

Stark came up behind Mystery and put his hand on the blue man's sholder. "Darcy, this is supposed to be a party, and you're dragging Joshua into shop talk. Give the man a break." Tony sat on the arm of the chair and leaned down to kiss Joshua on the cheek. The blue man received this affection with equanimity.

"He started it!" Darcy whined. "He asked me what spells I wanted to learn next given my first large-scale battle experience. What was I supposed to do? Besides, Bruce and Peter are talking about _genetics_ over there. Compared to that, magic is a perfectly acceptable party topic."

Tony's eyes sparkled when he heard that. "Genetics, huh? I might have to get in on that."

Joshua shook his head, smiling. "Don't work too hard, darling; remember, it's a party!" and he turned back to Darcy, continuing their conversation where it had left off.

Bruce had apparently finished the dishes he was making to his satisfaction, because he was now standing by a higher section of counter, where Widow, Hawkeye, Spidey and the Three were all nibbling on a selection of vegetables and small breadlike items which they dipped in different sauces. Tony strode over and threw an arm around Bruce, looking between him and the one called Spidey, who was also apparently Peter. The variety of different names was starting to make Sif's head spin.

"What kind of science fun is going on here without me?" Tony said, draping himself over Bruce, who looked momentarily uncomfortable, and then relaxed as his attention returned to the conversation.

Sif took a moment to wonder if Stark was actually sleeping with any of them, or if it was just his nature, like a sort of amplified version of Fandral.

Then Jane arrived.

"Hello, everybody," she cried as she stepped out of the elevator, and then embraced anyone she could find - Darcy, Josh, Bruce, Peter, Fandral, and Sif - before circulating back to Thor and surrendering herself to his enveloping embrace.

"Jane! This is a most pleasant surprise. I thought you would be working?"

"Well, I was." She looked annoyed for a moment. "Sometimes working for SHIELD is crap; my lab got shut down for emergency, I don't even know, alien autopsies or something. But on the plus side I get to spend time with you guys." She gave Thor an extra squeeze and a kiss on the cheek.

"Good thing I made extra steaks," Stephen said as he nodded to her, and then watched Volstagg inhale half a tub of what the lid called 'hummus.'

A few minutes later they all sat down to eat. Sif found herself on one side of the long table, flanked by Thor and Fandral, across from Bruce who was flanked by Steve and Tony. At one end Josh was next to Tony, Darcy sat at the head, and Jane was next to Thor. On the other end there were Volstagg, Hogun, Nat, Clint and Peter.

Sif was not particularly interested in the salad, but Thor urged her to try it, and this was so unusual for him that she complied. It had some kind of berry in it, and an unusual fruit vinegar, and it was actually quite pleasant. The potatoes were flawless. The meat was indeed magnificent.

Sif thought perhaps this was a good skill for a warrior to have. On hunting trips, she, the Three, and Thor had always subsisted on cold rations until they could get their prizes back to the palace kitchens.

Peter and Clint were discussing some kind of game that seemed far too violent for their mortal bodies, but when they began discussing coming back from the dead, she knew it to be abstract. Nat and Hogun seemed to be communicating only with their eyes. Volstagg focused on his food, and Fandral spent much of the meal trying to get the attention of the mortal ladies at each end of the table, but got caught up in the conversation of the game, saying he would like a chance to try it.

Tony, surrounded as he was by Josh, Bruce and Jane, started a conversation about the current and possible applications of portable Einstein Rosen Bridge generators and the experiments he was doing at his secret moon base. Darcy, bored, talked to Thor about the latest music she had downloaded, and Thor listened with polite interest until Darcy gave up and poked Josh with a fork. He glared, and then chided her for not using magic, which was a far more subtle weapon.

"Do you cook often?" Sif asked the Captain, since he was not engaged in conversation.

He beamed at her. "I have been recently. Bruce and Jarvis are teaching me. It seems so easy but I think that's more the skill of my teachers than anything else. What Bruce doesn't know, Jarvis can find out in a blink. And he never lets me forget and burn things, which is nice."

"Who is Jarvis?" Sif asked. "I think my mind has tried to remember too many names and I've lost a few. Is Jarvis here? I've got a name - or four - for every face here, I think."

"Oh, Jarvis doesn't have a face - or a body, for that matter," Steve said with a slightly worried expression. "So I guess you haven't been properly introduced. It tends to be memorable."

Sif looked at him blankly.

"I'm probably not the best person to explain this; I'm not familiar with modern Earth technology either. Jarvis? What are you?" Stephen said, turning his eyes slightly upwards.

"Lady Sif," said a voice from behind her. She turned, but there was no one there. "If I may attempt to explain. Earth has many thinking machines of varying complexity. I am among the most complex. Mister Stark created me to take care of his residences and the people inside them. I also help to run his armor."

Sif frowned. "But where are you, and what do you look like?"

"There are several places in the tower, at each of Mr. Stark's other residences, and one bank in each of Mr. Stark's suits of armor, where my core programming may reside at any given time. I can see, hear and speak through any machine connected to these that has the appropriate hardware. Given that there are millions of simpler thinking machines on this planet that have the capability to connect with each other and myself, one might say that I am everywhere. On the other hand, given that there are no physical systems dedicated to my function and no other purpose, one might say that I am nowhere."

Sif's eyes widened. "I did not realize that Midgard had such magic."

"Mr. Stark might object to the use of the word 'magic'," the thinking machine replied. "He insists that everything he does is perfectly in accordance with the limitations of science. However, given that very few other people can understand how Mr. Stark's creations work, and given that he has been making use of certain components that can only be created by the mages, Joshua and Darcy, and which are based on the same principles as your Bifrost, I would venture to say that the term 'magic' applies to much of what Mr. Stark does, perhaps including myself."

"Hey I understand exactly how arc pods work, even if I haven't figured out how the two of you make them," Tony interjected, gesturing at the two mages beside him.

"But none of the rest of us do," Clint replied.

"Speak for yourself," said Peter and Bruce simultaneously. Peter's words were punctuated by a gentle shove to Clint's shoulder. Jane merely nodded.

Thor spoke now. "I do not understand your definition of magic, Tony. On Asgard it is simply any skill or device that cannot be understood without years of specialized study. It is any technology or technique complex enough to be, by nature, arcane."

Tony shook his head. "If that's the case, explain to me the mechanism of biological magic."

Sif could tell that this was an old argument by the way Thor sighed at the Man of Iron.

"You know I have not taken the time to study such things. You must ask Joshua, as I continue to tell you and as I'm sure you have done. Just because you cannot master a science does not mean it is not a proper science."

"It usually does," Tony said with a raised eyebrow.

Jane frowned a little at him now. "Tony, there are always going to be questions that science doesn't have the answer to. Admit it, how disappointed would you be without a problem like this to bang your head against? The unexplained is what scientists live for. Just because this question is taking longer than usual is no reason to insult the whole field."

"But I'm _confused!_ I _hate_ being confused," Tony whined. He grabbed Bruce's shoulder. "How do the cells process and make use of the extradimensional energies?" Then he turned to the other side, grabbing the glowing green pendant hanging from Joshua's neck. "What the hell does being in contact with your skin do to this perfectly normal arc reactor?"

Both men sighed in the same 'not this again' manner that Thor had. Joshua laid his blue forehead against Tony's tan one, a blue hand encircling the inventor's neck, and said softly, "We _will_ get this stuff through that thick head of yours sooner or later." He smiled, slightly mocking but also soft, and Tony's face echoed it.

Sif looked back to Stephen, who was sighing softly. "So many brilliant people here and I understand exactly none of it. I'm still trying to puzzle out what exactly is the internet and when did telephones and typewriters grow brains and start learning to talk to it?"

"It's magic," Sif said with a shrug. "We warriors have no reason to understand it."

"But it's such useful stuff. The internet is basically a worldwide repository of shared knowledge, and I don't always have Jarvis around to help me navigate it. I'd hate to be without at least a working knowledge of what it is and how to use it."

"This is an interesting phrase," Sif replied. "'Working knowledge'? That is exactly what I mean. The essentials of its use and no more. I do not need to know how to _make_ a sword in order to learn how to _swing_ it."

"That's true," Peter contributed from beside the Captain. "Most internet users only have that working knowledge themselves. Only maybe one in fifty can code their own rudimentary HTML, let alone how to set up a server or even ping a site."

"That was complete gibberish to me," Clint said, "and if _you_ understood any of it, Cap, you're working way too hard."

"I do know that HTML is one of the languages computers use to speak to each other," Steve said.

"You do not need to know the _languages_ in which _thinking machines_ speak to each other, Stephen. You are a great warrior, and a great war leader, and no one should be able to ask more of you than that." Sif spoke with emphasis, and several heads around the table turned towards her.

"I can ask more of myself," Stephen said into the sudden hush. "People keep calling me a hero, and praising me for being able to fight. Well, it seems to me that I'm not doing a good enough job unless there comes a day when no one needs to fight anymore. And on that day I'd like to be able to say that I'm something more than a hero."

Sif blinked, uncertain how to reply to that. On Asgard, there was nothing more revered than a great warrior. There was nothing one could be that would mean more than being a hero. Her mind rebelled at absorbing such an alien concept.

Fandral nudged her. "_Now_ who is trying too hard?" he teased. "We are warriors of Asgard; what could possibly mean more than that? Now, have some more wine and leave the thinking to those mad enough to enjoy it."

Sif heard a strangely familiar mutter, and turned to see that Joshua was giving Fandral a scathing, almost pitying look. There was something about the mage that bothered Sif. But she set it aside, took the offered wine and returned her attention to her meal.

If she saw that the Captain was now watching her curiously, she didn't let it affect her carefully lighthearted mood.

Once they were done eating, Stark was the first to stand. "Ice cream and a movie?" he asked the room.

"Yes!" Clint said, standing as well. "But it's got to have action, no chick flicks. Agreed?"

"But not something too violent," Jane said. "You all just got back from a battle and you know I've been worried."

"I second that," said Bruce.

"It must have bold heroic deeds for our visiting friends. Some of your Midgardian movies can be quite confusing," Thor said.

"Hmm. That does narrow things down," Tony said, forehead wrinkling.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Darcy stood up, yelling. "I have _the_ most brilliant idea. We need to watch _The Incredibles!_"

And so it was agreed.

They congregated back in the kitchen, where a cold, sweet substance in various flavors was brought out and served very casually, the humans and Thor all grabbing their favorite variety and their favorite bowl. Steve recommended vanilla to start with.

"It may be considered plain by some, but that makes it a good place to start. And it has got flavor. Vanilla is in a lot of desserts; it just makes sweet things taste sweeter, somehow."

"But if you've never had anything chocolate, you have to try this," Natasha said, holding up a tub of chocolate ice cream.

Joshua shook his head. "You are all wrong. Strawberry ice cream is the most essential flavor to try. It is perhaps the best food Earth has to offer."

"That's settled, then!" Tony announced. "Sif, you get to eat your ice cream Neapolitan style."

This apparently meant a small serving of each of the mentioned flavors. Then they had to sit her down and watch her try all three, to see who was right.

She tried the vanilla first, because Steve had put forth a compelling argument. It did have a deep, almost floral sweetness. Then the chocolate. It had just a hint of a strangely satisfying bitterness. Last, the strawberry. It tasted like a sunrise, fresh, and very slightly tart.

"So?" Tony asked expectantly. "What do you think?"

"I see why people eat these together. They are so different; they compliment each other well."

The room, as one, gave an exasperated sigh. Sif smiled to herself.

Volstagg tried all the flavors before getting himself a bowl of the peanut butter chocolate. Fandral somehow quickly zeroed in on the butter pecan and declared it a food more than worthy of the gods. Hogun quietly avoided being seen to choose a flavor, although somehow he ended up with a small mug presumably containing ice cream at some point before everyone headed off to the area where the entertainment was to be viewed.

The Avengers had habitual favorite spots, and there was a bit of a scuffle as the seats filled up before everyone got one. Eventually Steve and Sif both stood waiting for the other to take the last seat on the couch.

Steve insisted she take it with such a serious look in his eye that she could not bring herself to refuse. She sat on the soft couch, and Stephen sat down at her feet, leaning against the arm, and he took out a sheaf of papers bound together with wire. She watched with interest. Anything this man did was likely to be worth watching.

It was a drawing of Tony, the one they called Iron Man in battle, the sparkle and mischief of his eyes captured. It reminded Sif very much of Loki. She thought that even had she not seen the armored man excel in battle, this picture would be all she needed to tell her that being on the wrong side of Tony Stark would be an egregious mistake.

Art suddenly seemed like a warrior's skill. Practical. A form of communication as profound and universal as the Alltongue.

Sif had always seen art as a thing that the tame pet known as a wife might take up to occupy her time while her husband was at war.

That it might serve as a way to warn, persuade, impress things on the memory, gain insight into an enemy - or an ally - this was entirely new. Sif felt as if her head were cracking open.

Sif no longer wondered how it was that Midgard and its inhabitants had wrought such profound changes on Thor. These people had a way of making one question one's oldest assumptions, things that, while one stood on Asgard, seemed entirely obvious.

Sif looked in awe at the man who sat below her, building ideas, preserving impressions, performing wondrous magic with the most basic of tools.

She looked at the paper again. The image forming there was a second likeness of Tony, but this time with Joshua, and Sif saw that he was drawing them as they were at this moment, bodies wrapped around each other and oriented towards each other even as their eyes were focused on the entertainment.

Sif decided that those two were almost certainly sleeping together.

It hit her, then, as she looked at the colorless drawing.

Joshua was Loki.

Loki was Jotunn.

She froze for a moment, absorbing this.

All she had known prior was that Loki was banished to Midgard, without his powers, and set as Thor's charge, who was to let the humans do as they pleased with him and make sure he did not escape.

Apparently what pleased the human prince, Stark, was to return Loki's powers to him and welcome him into the ranks of his team, into his bed, into his heart. Because the more she looked back and forth between the drawing and the men, the more obvious it was that this was love.

She whispered to Thor, who was sitting beside her with Jane in his lap. "How long have you known that Loki was Jotunn?"

He looked to her, unsurprised. "Since just after my banishment. Almost as long as he himself has known. Finding out you are a monster...it is not exactly a reassuring thing, and Loki has come to regret many of his actions from that time. But if you wish to know more, you must speak to him of it."

Thor returned his eyes to the movie, but his attention to Jane, kissing her tenderly on the temple.

Sif looked again at Loki and his human love. As much as she distrusted the younger prince, and as much as the idea of Jotunn frightened her, this man, this hero, Joshua, had proven himself to her as an ally, and had clearly convinced Thor of the same and more.

If this place could change Thor, if this place could change _her_ in the bare handful of hours she'd spent here, she could perhaps believe in its power to change Loki. But what finally allowed her to regain her calm was the thought that she trusted Thor, and Loki was still Thor's charge, if in a different way than she had expected.

She would speak to Loki after this.

Steve had turned over another page, and was now drawing a series of Volstagg's expressions as he watched the show. Wonder, surprise, laughter. There was a great deal of life there and Sif knew that Steve appreciated the man's character the way few did so soon after meeting him.

Sif shifted her attention back to the entertainment. An oddly squat but incredibly forceful woman was showing Elastigirl a new set of fighting gear. "It can stretch as far as you can, without injuring yourself," the squat woman snarked at her.

Bruce commented, "Tony, can you let go of your obsession with magic long enough to invent that stuff? Because that would actually be insanely useful."

Tony quipped back, "I'm not a fashion designer, and excuse me for wanting to revolutionize the face of science. Again." But he got out one of his small thinking machines and began to play with ideas.

The squat woman was now berating Elastigirl for crying, saying, "and you will remind him who _you_ are!"

The women in this movie were artists, wives and mothers, but they were also heroes and armorers; they lived in a world where both were important.

Sif suddenly did not ever want to return to Asgard; the thought made her somewhat ill.

"Are you all right?" Stephen asked from below her.

"...No," she said, but did not elaborate.

He patted her a bit awkwardly on the knee, and returned to his art.


	2. Titles Roles Perspectives Paths

**More Than Heroes**

**Chapter 2: Titles; Roles; Perspectives; Paths**

When the movie ended, Clint told Jarvis to start a game called Little Big Planet. Clint handed Fandral a small black object with various protrusions and took one for himself. Peter also retrieved two of these and held one aloft, saying, "Room for one more. Anyone?"

"Here," Darcy called, holding out her hands, and Peter tossed one of the black objects to her.

The next half hour was a disorienting mixture of explanations, encouragements, disappointments, triumphs, colors, music and popping noises of various types. Fandral enjoyed himself, especially when Darcy decorated his playing piece with ducks, each of which made a squashing noise, but Sif was still feeling sick at heart and the frivolity was jarring.

"I'm going to get some air. Join me?"

Steve held out a hand, offering to help her up. She took it gladly, and they walked out to the balcony, where there was still noise, but it was dull and far below and had a sort of mundane, life-as-usual feel to it.

The sun was sinking between the angular shapes of the buildings here, and the sky was turning a fairly spectacular shade of orange.

"It has been a few centuries since I last saw a Midgardian sunset and they are even more marvelous than I remembered." She leaned against the railing and looked out across the city. Her chest ached even more now at the thought of leaving here.

Steve cleared his throat. Then after a false start or two, he spoke. "I've learned how to talk to soldiers but I still have trouble with women."

She turned her head in his direction and gave a tight, ironic little smile. "I've worked very hard to be treated no differently than my male comrades in battle. Please; today I am one of your soldiers."

"Of course," he said, frowning a little and straightening up. Sif felt unaccountably sad about this.

"I meant to make you more comfortable, not less," she protested. "And I..." She sighed. "We're _both_ making rather a mess of this, aren't we?"

"So you do - I mean," Steve scrambled. "So would it be all right if I told you that you're beautiful?"

Sif's spirit felt as if it had tried to leap and had fallen and twisted an ankle instead. The pain of it brought tears to her eyes for the second time that day. She wondered at herself.

Stephen looked worriedly at her. "So, not OK, then? I can leave if you want..."

"No, no, dont," she said. "Just give me a moment."

Steve obediently stood at a respectful distance and watched the sun sink lower.

"I have learned much today," she said. "More than I would have thought possible and perhaps more than I can bear. Yet...I do not want to leave."

"That sounds a bit familiar. I don't know how much of my story you've heard but I'm not exactly from modern Earth either. I woke up here and so much was different. It's so...frenetic. Exhausting. There's so much information on so many subjects, available so quickly you can't even blink without missing six new things. It's intoxicating."

"Yes," she said. "It is."

"If you don't mind my asking, what in particular did you learn today that's got you so twisted up?"

Sif bit her lip. "That here on Earth, I am allowed to want more than one thing with all my heart." She stared out at the horizon once more, trying to think it through and keep her composure. "Yesterday I wanted nothing but to be the consummate Asgardian warrior. Because on Asgard, most days, even that is too much for me to ask for."

Stephen sighed. "The whole idea of protecting certain people at the cost of others has always seemed silly to me. If someone wants to fight for what they love, why not let them? Some of us don't want to be protected." Then he chuckled. "Well, that was an old thought. Left over from, what, seventy-five years ago now? Before I was finally allowed to start training."

Sif glanced at him in surprise. "It seems we are more similar than I could have imagined. You were not allowed to train as a warrior? Why?"

Steve smiled a little ironically at her. "It's good to meet someone who wants to hear my story from me. Sometimes it seems like everyone on this planet already knows, or think they do, everything that's happened to me. I'm a legend. It's bizarre." He looked out over the city again. "I was a runt, a sickly little kid, and every doctor who looked at me was afraid to breathe on me, like I might die. I knew better. I wasn't afraid to fight. I knew I could survive anything." Stephen looked down at his own arms, resting on the railing. "I guess I was more right than I thought."

He sighed. "The experiment made me strong, but it still didn't force people to take me seriously. I had to go out there and _show_ them what I could do. Well, I've saved the world a couple of times now, so I guess that makes it all worth it."

She nodded. "But once you have the thing you most desired, what then do you do with your heart?"

They stood in silence for a few moments.

"I thought I could have everything once," Stephen said, "and then everyone I knew died."

"You had someone?" she asked.

"I think so," he said. "Or I would have, if things had gone differently. Now? The Avengers are my colleagues, my friends, but anything more? I'd be afraid to lose it again."

"If you are anything," Sif said, "it is courageous."

Stephen looked at her for a moment, nodded, then kissed her.

It was soft and sweet, in every way a contrast to the hard thing that was her life on Asgard, and the frenetic whirlwind that was this Earth city spread below them, swirling with more and more moving lights as the sun fell out of the sky. It was long and lingering and sad, not like a first kiss at all but more like a last one. She supposed they both lived lives in which any kiss could be the last.

They held on to each other for a long time after their mouths broke apart. They watched the sky turn dark and the buildings and signs flood with light.

After a time, she said, "I suppose we had better go see what the others are doing. They can't still be playing that abominable game."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Stephen said with a touch of a laugh.

They re-entered the room with the large screen, which was now dark. The room was empty except for Darcy and Fandral...being demonstratively affectionate on one of the couches. Sif and Steve left again quickly. But the whole floor seemed to be abandoned now.

"Lady Sif, may I help you with anything?" said a voice from the air. Jarvis, then. The faceless servant.

"Jarvis, where are Volstagg and Hogun?" Sif asked.

"Mr. Stark offered them rooms for the night and they accepted. He has asked me to extend you the same invitation when you seemed less occupied. I can guide you to your room now, if you wish."

"Actually, Jarvis, could you let me?" Stephen interrupted.

"As you wish, Captain Rogers. The Lady Sif has been assigned the yellow room on the second guest level."

Stephen took her hand and laid it on his crooked arm in a gesture that would have been out of place in all but the most formal of settings on modern Earth, but seemed quite natural to both of them, and led her to the elevator.

As Stephen opened the door to the room for her, he said, "Will you be all right? Jarvis can help you if you have any questions about the room or anything, but I don't want to leave you alone if you're still feeling...lost."

She smiled. "If I can be sure that I will see you tomorrow - before I leave - " she frowned a little. "Then I will be content to rest here until then."

"I've got nowhere else I need to be," he said. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Tomorrow," she said, and closed the door.

Then she sank to the floor, and felt lost.

* * *

The thing that Sif woke up realizing was that she had yet to speak to Loki.

Jarvis told her that people were gathering on the Avengers common floor for breakfast, so she dressed in her leathers and went to join them.

_Thor was cooking._

Steve looked on as the crown prince of Asgard flipped pancakes, commenting and encouraging. Bruce stood beside Thor, cooking eggs and potatoes. Joshua was slicing peaches, and Tony was stealing and eating them. Natasha got out plates and silverware. The Three were all standing gawking at the sight of Thor cooking as well. It seemed Clint, Peter and Darcy were still asleep. Jane had already left, as her lab was available again today.

Breakfast was, of course, delicious. Sif looked contemplatively around the table. If the Three suspected Joshua's true identity, they hadn't let on. In the case of Hogun, at least, that meant very little, but still, she thought none of them would be carrying this story back to Odin. She wondered if Heimdall knew.

"Stephen," she told him quietly, "I can't go back yet. If I were to stay another day..."

"You'd be welcome," he said quickly. "There's no question about that. After yesterday you're practically an Avenger anyway."

Sif smiled.

After breakfast the Three announced that they would be returning to Asgard.

"I will be staying somewhat longer," Sif told them. "I have some further business with the Avengers."

Sif hated the look that Fandral gave her at that. It was knowing and gleeful and it told her exactly how Fandral had spent his night. She was glad to see him leave, even if it left her feeling somewhat afloat in a world she was only just learning about.

She looked around the room. Thor was here, and the human Avengers who had fought beside her. As Stephen had said, she could be one of them. She could have a place here. But was that enough for her?

Her eyes fell on Joshua. "Loki," she said.

Beside the blue-skinned man, Tony narrowed his eyes. But Loki simply answered. "Good morning, Sif."

"May we speak?"

"Yes, I think we should," Loki said, standing.

"Are you sure about this?" Tony asked, trying to hide his worry by focusing on the tablet stylus he was twirling in his fingers.

"Tony, I know Sif's fighting abilities far better than she knows mine. With the reinforcement of my magic, the training of my Jotunn powers and the addition of the arc reactor, I am much more than I was when I last fought her, and then I won."

"You cheated," Sif reminded him.

"Indeed," Loki nodded. "And now I have many more ways of cheating."

Tony relaxed and smiled at that. "I'm sure you do," he said, eyes going to his tablet again and mind actually focusing on the information there this time.

Loki led the way up the bare metal staircase to the room above the kitchen, which was dominated by one of the large viewing devices. It was dark now, and the room's soft, amorphous seating in forest green and grey reminded Sif of mossy rocks.

Loki sat in a low-backed chair near one of the windows, motioning Sif to a similar one.

"It is good to see you, Sif," he said. "There are few things I truly miss of my life on Asgard, but the enigma that is the Lady Sif is one."

"It is...confusing to see you. Twice you have attempted to rule planets, and twice I have heard that you were dead. Never have I heard that you were Jotunn, or that you had joined forces with the heroes of earth. If your life has truly become so good and noble, why do you hide it?"

Loki chuckled. "You call this hiding?" He gestured at himself, then at the tower in general. "I fight alongside the most famous heroes this world has to offer. My face is known around the world. And this is my true face. For the first time since Odin stole me away from Jotunheim, there is no magic hiding what I really am."

Sif shook her head.

"What they think of you on Asgard now - it is terrible. That is not what I see now, and surely if these heroes would vouch for you..."

"What you see now." Loki narrowed his red eyes at her. "What you see because your ignorance of my identity gave you the freedom to see. I do not _want_ Loki, son of Odin. He can stay dead. What you see now is who I am, and I would rather people either see it or not see it on its own merits, and not add it to the heap of refuse that has been thrown over the name of Loki."

"I see...or I begin to. Do you then not hide yourself from Heimdall?"

Loki smiled. "Not since my second apparent death. He and I have gained something of an understanding. I helped him to reconstruct the Bifrost. Frigga is also aware that I live and fight beside the Avengers, so I am certain that the Allfather knows. He has not seen fit to stop me or to reveal my identity, and I assure you, these are the wisest decisions he has ever made regarding me."

Loki's smile gained a painful twist. "There is nothing more I need from him but to continue to ignore my existence. I have now everything I valued about my life on Asgard, with me here on Earth or within reach of my magic. I need no one's permission or good grace to live as I wish to live. And especially not that of those on Asgard who think badly of me without bothering to find out what truly happened."

Sif nodded grimly. "And so you do not hide, but those who look for you must see more than the obvious in order to find you."

"I must admit," Loki said, "I did not credit you with the insight to see that Joshua and Loki were one and the same."

Sif rolled her eyes. "It seems obvious now, but as I almost did not realize, I cannot pretend to be too insulted."

"When did you realize, if I might ask?"

"It was during last night's entertainment, when Stephen was sketching you and Stark. Without color, your likeness is much more similar. Also, the light he put in Stark's eyes...it reminded me of you, when you had a particularly devious idea. I was thinking of you."

Loki chuckled again. "Neither would I normally credit Rogers with an abundance of insight. But it seems that together, you are more than the sum of your parts."

Sif laughed brightly at this as well.

Loki watched her smile.

"Earth has changed you already, I think," he observed.

"Yes," she said, her smile remaining but turning bittersweet.

"Then, forgive me, but...how can you question my wanting to stay here and build a new life?"

Sif looked at him thoughtfully, considering her own situation.

"You must remember that I also chose to abandon one identity for another. But...I thought I could live without that side of who I am, and I am now finding that I may have been wrong."

Loki contemplated her for a moment, and then spoke.

"Here is the relevant question, then. Would you have been able to live your life as you wanted to without giving up those things for a time?"

"...No," she was forced to answer.

"Then you understand the value of being able to define yourself from a position that is completely separate from your original context."

"Yes," said Sif, frowning. "But..."

He sighed tiredly. "I concede the possibility that at some point in the future I may find a use for my old title in the court of Asgard. But today is not that day, and today I choose to define myself as Joshua Albastru, as an Avenger, and what Asgard chooses to think of my former identity in the meantime is of no concern to me at the moment."

Sif nodded. "I understand. I will not tell those on Asgard who you are."

"I would also invite you to think of me as Joshua, to call me Joshua, as, demonstrably, even Thor can learn to do." Loki chuckled. "And I can hope that one day you may look at me and think, without effort, this is my old friend and fellow warrior, Joshua, a Jotunn, whose home is Earth. Because all those are what I am. If you would still consider me an old friend after all that has changed."

Joshua's red eyes were strangely warm and soft, with this yearning expression in them. There was little that was Loki Silvertongue, and yet much that was the young man she remembered as Thor's brother, always wanting to join in, to help in any way that he could; that young man had disappeared quickly with his marriage to Sigyn and the birth of Hel, not long after he and Sif had met. Then the prince of many masks was created, and Sif left to wonder if the boy she had met was only one more mask. Now, seeing it again, clear as day though the face was so different, she thought not.

"Of course, Joshua, my old friend," she said, smiling warmly. Perhaps he was right, and his escape from the expectations of Asgard really had allowed him to become what he was always meant to be.

He returned the smile, but it was tinged with confusion. "That seemed too easy. No questions about what happened to me after I fell from the Bifrost, why I led an invasion against this world?"

"I am sure that Thor and the other heroes of Earth have asked them time and again, and they trust you. Thor trusts you, and I trust Thor. That is all I need to know to fight beside you."

"What a simple life you lead," Joshua smirked. "But you must have your own opinion as well, unless you intend only to feign friendship for Thor's sake?"

Sif frowned. "I would not. No, you seem - better, happier than you have since before Sigyn. Even if I did not count you friend when last we stood on Asgard together, I recognize you, old friend, as the boy who conspired to free me from the doom that was my marriage, even if it meant being led to your own." She looked thoughtful. "In fact, now that I think on it, I owe you everything, old friend, and it cost you dearly."

Loki lowered his eyes. "The past is the past. If any of it changed, how then would we have found ourselves here?"

"You love him," she said. "Tony Stark."

"More than any save Hel," he said, now looking out the window into the distance. The tightness, nearly worry in his eyes reminded Sif how worrisomely mortal most humans were. And then there was Stephen, outliving all his human acquaintances, not knowing how many lifetimes he would live through and watch pass away.

"Joshua, what shall I do? I cannot simply throw away that which I have devoted my entire life to. But I fear that it is no longer enough."

"Give yourself time," Loki said. "Step outside of your chosen identity and see if you still need it. A week, two - the Lady Sif will still be the Lady Sif if you choose to go back."

"Very well," Sif said. "Then that is what I will do."

* * *

Sif announced her intentions to stay on Earth for a further two weeks. The Avengers, as a rule, were thrilled.

She fell into the rhythm of daily life at the tower fairly easily. It had the same feel as being a protector of Asgard, except that instead of hunts to amuse themselves, there were various games, not just the ones played with the strange black devices but also more physical ones.

There was sparring, of course, but also tennis, basketball and several others that involved various sizes and shapes of balls. She found that she, Thor and Steve were all pleasantly evenly matched at these. She had the edge in agility, Thor in strength and Steve in strategy. She broke her share of equipment before learning what it could take, but Tony said not to worry about it, that he actually had a budget for replacing sports equipment that fell victim to superhuman strength.

"You're actually saving me money, I think," he said. "Basketballs are cheaper than punching bags and Steve has stopped going through those quite as fast with you here to distract him."

Both of them were used to spending more time outdoors than the rest of the Avengers, and so they spent a lot of time on the terrace outside the Avengers common floor, where several long low chairs stood beside a dining table that was hardly ever used. If someone wanted to find Steve or Sif they learned to check out here first.

Today Tony stuck his head out to see them stretched out on the low chairs in the spring sun.

"You're still out here? Jeez. Haven't either of you heard of skin cancer - you know what, never mind."

"Hey, Tony. What's going on?" Steve asked him.

"Just ordering pizza for lunch. Feel like anything in particular? Darcy's craving ham and pineapple, so we're changing up the usual order a bit."

"I have not tried a pizza topping yet that I disliked," Sif said. "I wil try this pineapple."

"Usual's fine with me, or whatever, as long as it's got some vegetables on it," Steve said.

Tony went back inside, and the two continued their conversation.

"I am a warrior of Asgard, first and foremost," Sif said, "and that has been who I am for more than eight hundred years. If I allow myself to want something other than that, I'm not certain if I will be able to choose between them, but it seems that I must."

"Why do you have to choose?" he said. "Can't warriors have lives?"

"The people of Asgard allow me to be a warrior because I have proven myself independent, equal to any male warrior and devoted to the life of a warrior. Others may have lives and families, but I...if I am seen to be associated with a man, especially a great warrior such as yourself, I worry that they will think I have gone soft, that I seek protection, that I need protection."

"That's ridiculous," Stephen said.

"Here, it is," Sif said. "On Asgard, it is merely the way of things."

"You could live here and be a hero. You fit in with the Avengers like you belong here."

"Yes, and this frightens me," she said. "I am not ready to give up the life on Asgard that I have worked so hard for."

"Fair enough," he said.

"I want everything," she said. "I want a home on Asgard, to join the feasts at the palace on festival days, to stand in protection of that realm if it is threatened. I want to be an Avenger, to have a life here, to have love and comfort and all the things that a human is allowed to want."

"And what would happen if you kept all of that; if you had and Asgardian life while you were on Asgard and an Avenger's life while you're on Earth?"

"Then the people of Asgard would believe that I was ashamed of you, or that you were afraid to face the challenges to become a citizen of Asgard, or that this was only a casual dalliance for me. I do not wish to encourage any of these thoughts. I wish to be proud of my choices, to stand proud as a warrior. I wish to be taken seriously, and I wish you to be taken seriously as well."

She hesitated.

"That is - if I am not presuming too much. Asgardians think in terms of centuries, which I know you are not accustomed to do, but know that I would wish to have your company as long as you are willing to give it."

Stephen reached over and took her hand. "If we're going to do this, I'm in it all the way. I'd like to marry you, eventually, if you decide this is what you want."

Sif beamed at him.

Then Peter came outside with a couple of pizza boxes.

"Hey, guys, I brought you some food," he said, setting the pizzas down near Steve, who glanced at them and then back to Sif.

"Jeez, you two are worse than me and Gwen," he muttered, and went back inside.

After a while, they remembered that they were hungry and got out the pizza and ate it. Apparently Natasha had opted for peppers in addition to their usual sausage and onions. Steve thought it was a nice change. Sif enjoyed the pineapple, although she conceded that it would be too sweet to have often. Then they lay back and enjoyed the sunlight and each other's quiet company.

Sif sat up with a start.

"I may have something."

"What?" Stephen shook his head to clear it. Apparently he had fallen asleep on the sunny terrace.

"I have an idea, but I do not know if you will like it."

His eyes sharpened as he realized this might be important. "Well, the only way to know is to tell it to me."

"On this world one can truly be...anything, but on Asgard...how do I even begin to say this...if I am to be a warrior I must live the life of a warrior. There can be no..." Sif groaned and shook her head.

"What is it?"

"I am not a poet. I am a warrior and this...this defies all convention. The words will come out completely wrong."

"Then just say it. Forget all that and just say what you need to say."

Sif took a deep breath, then said quickly but loud and clear:

"I am a warrior of Asgard and I need a wife."

Steve blinked.

"...I think I owe Fury another ten dollars."

Sif gave a hesitant smile. "I know how it must sound, but I truly think it could work."

"Uh, do you mean to fool people into thinking I'm a woman?"

"No, no! This will be no more a deceit than I perpetrate when I 'play at' being a warrior, as people used to say before I taught them how serious I was." She thought. "The trick is to insist that you are a thing until people forget that they believe you cannot be that thing."

"So I think what you're saying is that we can be anything we want to each other, but if you want to maintain the image you've cultivated on Asgard, we're going to have to explain it very carefully."

"That is something like what I mean. There are certain things that are simply not done on Asgard. That said, I have done many of those things. But I did it by being a warrior, by being the perfect Asgardian warrior, and nothing less, and nothing else."

"Ah. So you are as close as a woman can get to being the ideal Asgardian man." Steve frowned good-humoredly. "How do I measure up as compared to the ideal Asgardian woman?"

"Perfectly," Sif grinned.

"Really? How so?"

"You are beautiful and well-groomed, graceful in your movements, and unfailingly polite. You are gifted in cooking, formal conversation, and one of the visual arts. The only thing that could make you better qualified to be a warrior's wife would be if you were a virgin."

Steve blushed.

"Um," he said.

Sif's eyes widened.

"Truly?"

Steve looked uncertainly up at her. "Yes?"

She smiled at him. "That is quite all right with me," she said, "and it is rather perfect for Asgard."

Then she covered her mouth.

"Don't hold back your laughter on my account. I'm amused by it sometimes myself. And I haven't seen you laugh nearly often enough."

Soon both of them were laughing, long and hard.

They lay facing each other on the long low chairs, and their breath settled again as their thoughts turned back to the serious aspects of the topic.

"I'm still a little confused. Things are a certain way on Asgard, right? But you weren't surprised to see that Loki was with a man, another fighter."

"This is Midgard, for one, and Asgardians have a history of fleeing here when they wish to live outside of the traditions of Asgardian society. More importantly, Loki is Loki; he has never quite fit the warrior mold. I believe it is why he found himself always in Thor's shadow. I begin to understand his trouble. To have a call to do something outside of the expectations for you - for him, magic - but to want respect as well, a place in society - "

Sif sighed, a painful sound.

"Did you know he had a wife, and a child? I am not certain what happened between them but I know Sigyn always disapproved of his magic. He was never the same after that. But he seems happier now. To have his magic, his true self, be part of his accepted image here? I can tell it's very precious to him."

Stephen was looking at her with a strange intensity.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Do you want kids?"

Sif looked up, startled.

"By the Nine. I hadn't thought of that. I haven't since I was promised to Thor." She looked seriously at him. "I will not give up my life as a warrior."

"I know that," he said. "We can do both. People here make it work all the time."

"But while we are on Asgard, as my wife, you would be responsible for our children."

Steve considered. "Well, I never really saw myself as a mother. But hey, I didn't think I'd be going to other planets either. I think it would be worth it." He smiled, then looked at her again. "If you want kids."

Sif bit her lip. "Give me some time," she said slowly. "Perhaps I only need to get used to the idea."

Steve smiled. "Time is one thing we have," he said. "Take all the time you need."

* * *

At the end of the two weeks, Sif came back to Asgard, bringing Stephen with her and sending word ahead to the Court that she had brought a petitioner from Earth to request the Challenges.

They entered the hall to a great deal of whispering. Sif smiled to herself, knowing this was nothing compared to the gasps and shock that would happen when she announced their intentions.

They approached Odin, and Sif gave the expected line first. "I have brought a human who wishes to undergo the challenges to become a citizen of Asgard."

"And who is this man to you, that you bring him forth for this honor?"

Sif braced herself.

"I would like you all to meet Stephen Rogers of Earth. My future wife."

The court gasped. Odin stared. Frigga valiantly attempted not to laugh.

"I believe," said Odin dangerously, "that you mean husband."

"Am I," said Sif, "or am I not, a warrior of Asgard?"

"Sif," Odin began, and then he sighed. "You are."

"Then do I not have the right to choose a wife?"

Odin looked as if he was going to burst.

"I suppose you do," he said finally.

"So, then. I choose him."

"And you agree to this?" Odin asked Steve.

"Yes," Steve answered simply.

Odin shook his head. "How am I to judge this? There is no precedent."

"Really? It seems entirely straightforward to me," said Sif.

"Really."

Sif smiled. "You may judge his worthiness to be a citizen of Asgard. Let Frigga be the judge of his worthiness to be the wife of one of Asgard's great warriors."

Odin nodded in resigned agreement.

Frigga smiled, and gestured for Stephen to follow her out of the room. Steve squeezed Sif's hand before releasing it and following.

They sat down in a sunny room, decorated in light colors and with flowers.

"Well," she said. "This is something I never expected to be doing."

Stephen only nodded in acknowledgement.

"Since you are a warleader, we can forego the question of nobility, although that is quite an unusual circumstance for a prospective wife." She looked at him with a carefully businesslike expression. "So. What are your domestic qualifications?"

"Well, I can cook pretty decently, I think. All kinds of dishes from all over Earth. I've never roast a whole boar, but if I was allowed the help of my teachers, I think I could manage it."

She smiled broadly. "Very good. And can you clean?"

Steve smiled a little remembering sort of smile, and said, "Ma'am, the way America trains men to fight, you don't get through it without learning how to get things clean."

"Hmm," Frigga said, successfully stifling another laugh. "Well, then. And are you accomplished in any of the aesthetic arts - singing, perhaps, or embroidery?" She said this with a wink.

"I can draw," he said, "and paint a little, though I'm not in practice at the moment. Pencil and paper are enough to keep track of during wartime, and lately I've been focusing more on my cooking."

"Ah," she said, grinning. "I don't suppose you have an example of your work on you?"

"Now what kind of an artist would I be if I went to visit a new planet and didn't bring any paper?" he said, pulling out a miniature sketchbook. He handed it over so Frigga could flip through it.

The first picture was of Sif, both strength and beauty apparent in every line. It nearly brought tears to Frigga's eyes.

She looked at Stephen with earnest emotion. "Sif has been waiting for someone like you for a long time," she said. "I will do everything I can to help the two of you pull this off."

She flipped through the rest of the pages, a few people and scenes from the tower and then some quick sketches of his first glimpses of Asgard. The rest was still empty.

She returned it to him, and donned her carefully businesslike expression again.

"Now I must ask you about your past romantic experiences," she said. "First the formal. In your case, have you either courted, or been courted by, anyone?"

Steve chuckled. "I suppose you could say Sif isn't the first warrior to have courted me. Peggy once...expressed her displeasure with me by shooting at me. She was frightening."

Frigga's brow wrinkled slightly. "Oh dear. And what happened between you?"

Stephen sighed deeply now. "Not a lot, actually. I went to battle, and I couldn't get back for much longer than I expected. When I came back...she had moved on, lived her life. She thought I was dead."

Frigga nodded sadly. "And what of informal romantic experiences?"

Steve blushed. "I was once ambushed and kissed. That's about it."

"So you and your first suitor...had no prior arrangement?"

"We never even got to dance."

"You are pure?" Frigga asked. Light danced in her eyes but she showed no other sign of laughter.

"If that's how you want to put it," Steve said.

"Well, then, there is absolutely no basis for anyone to say that you are not perfectly qualified to be the wife of an Asgardian warrior." She stood. "I will make that clear to the court."

"Thank you, Ma'am," Steve said. "I appreciate it."

She smiled, delighted.

"You are a rare man indeed, Stephen Rogers," said the Queen of Asgard.


	3. Claims Offenses Thefts Clashes

Note: One of the things that's been slowing down the progress of writing this story is that there are a lot of things that want to be included that aren't really sticking close to the Steve/Sif romantic storyline. But I've come to the conclusion that this story is just about more than that romance. So in the next couple of chapters, you'll see a lot of FrostIron, Thor/Jane, and generally political and philosophical stuff. But it's all going to stay on the theme of being more than the niche where society puts you, which has always been the heart of the story. And I promise to get back to more central Steve/Sif. They're not exactly absent in these chapters, either.

Hoping you're still with me!

-q

**More Than Heroes**

**Chapter 3: Claims; Offenses; Thefts; Clashes**

Odin had set the first challenge. Stephen had said something about it being a classic quest.

"Your first challenge will be to go into the mountains, find a certain dragon, and bring me the artifact that has been hidden inside its breast."

Stephen had been given a dagger, and pointed in the direction of a cave on a precipitous cliff where the dragon had its lair.

The artifact was a powerful one, and Heimdall was not able to see anything within a stone's throw of it; nor could whoever was seated on Asgard's throne, using its magic.

Sif was afraid.

It had been three days. There was no time limit on the challenge, but Sif was beginning to fear that if he did not return soon, it was because he was injured or dead. She paced the palace with increasing restlessness.

When she went out to pace in the gardens instead, Frigga came to talk with her, face all gentle concern.

"What should I do?" Sif asked.

"If you go to him, help him, you may have to choose between him and this world. That would be difficult, because though you love him, you have not had much time with him - barely a breath, by the standards of our lifetimes. But if you do not, you may regret not giving yourself the opportunity to choose."

"He _can_ fight his own battles," Sif said, defiant. But then she wilted. "He does not always come back without help."

"Go to him, then, and see," Frigga said. "We will send Muninn to witness what help you give, and if it voids the challenge."

"What could I do, that would not break the rules?" Sif asked.

"Go, do what you must," the queen said kindly, "and I will plead your case with the Allfather."

Sif nodded, and embraced Frigga. "Thank you," she said.

* * *

Sif approached the cliff with dread. He was not lying broken at the bottom, at least, for which she thanked Odin. She climbed, finding the easiest path. Near the top, she saw the dagger he had been given, embedded in the rock. No weapon, then. She decided not to think too hard about that.

The dagger could not be pulled out easily, and made for a much-needed point of purchase, so she left it, cautiously pulling herself up until she could see the cave.

What she saw...she could not make herself believe.

* * *

_a day earlier_

Steve had lost his dagger while climbing, but he still had his shield, and he felt more comfortable carrying just that, anyway. He hoisted himself up onto the ledge.

It was really a dragon. A huge lizard, with shining scales, lying sprawled in the mouth of the cave. Its head was the length of Steve's entire arm. The rest of it was...really damn long.

The dragon slept restlessly, shifting on the stony ground. A glowing stone was embedded in the skin between its forelegs.

Steve thought about his next move. He had his shield, but since this was an Asgardian creature, that probably wasn't going to do enough damage to it.

The dragon shifted, opening one eye and rolling it around to look at Steve. He raised his shield defensively. The dragon sat up, and Steve looked around him, getting a feel for the terrain and any improvised weapons he could spot.

Then the dragon laughed. "You're no Aesir. You don't even have a blade on you. What kind of dragon slayer is this?"

"Wait, you can talk?" Steve said, looking up at the dragon, shocked.

"You're a woefully underprepared hero. What did you think you'd be fighting? Some mindless beast with no ability to strategize? I'd predict your swift demise, but I think I may have to keep you around and play with you for a little bit." The dragon showed its teeth in a terrible grimace of a smile.

"Good," Steve said, sitting down on a convenient rock. "Because I'm not fighting a reasoning being unless it gives me a reason."

The dragon blinked, eyes huge as the shield that Steve still held. Then it narrowed them. "So perhaps you are a wielder of trickery, of magic. One like the sorceress who put this gem in my chest. One whose every move and word is poison."

Steve saw the way the dragon curled around the artifact buried in its flesh, with pain and the memory of more pain. He was reminded sharply of Tony, the moment Steve had realized why the man lashed out, what he had had to defend himself against. He took a breath.

"No, I'm not, but I wouldn't expect you to believe me after the way you've been treated. Like an animal, like an enemy. Only ever used as a means to an end. It's not right."

The dragon's huge eyes inched ever closer. "Where in the Nine does such a strange creature come from?"

"Midgard," Steve answered. "America, where we try to treat everybody equally, no matter their form."

The dragon chuckled darkly. "Then you must all be obtuse, or naive. We all have our places, our roles to fulfill. There are gods, there are monsters, and there are mortals. We may associate, but we can never truly be equal."

"Well, I don't hold to that. I happen to have a shield-brother who's a Frost Giant and several who are women, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't mindlessly follow Asgardian convention."

The dragon sat back on its haunches, staring at him. "Truly? A Jotunn?"

"Oh - the Aesir aren't supposed to know about that. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention that to them." Steve ducked his head. "But yes. Blue skin, red eyes, ice spikes and all. He's pretty ferocious and I'm glad to have him on my side." He looked at the dragon consideringly. "If I have a choice, I'd prefer to be on the same side as you, as well."

"And tell me," the dragon purred, "do you have a choice?"

"I'd like to think I do. I'm not a mindless follower of anyone - not the U. S. Army, not SHIELD, and definitely not Odin. I'd like to be a citizen of Asgard, but my self-respect is more important. So unless you give me a reason, I don't intend to harm you."

The dragon squinted at him. "You _are_ a strange creature. You would simply give up on this quest - I take it that this is one of Odin's challenges - and leave me be, if I say go?"

"I'd hope to do more than that," said Steve. "I'd return to Odin and tell him what I thought about mistreating sentient creatures. I'd try to get him to change his laws to protect dragons. I'd offer to bring you to Earth, if that failed. Although the people there aren't perfect either."

"All that for a simple conversation? Are you so starved of company in your own realm?"

"It's not about what I get in trade. It's about what's right."

"You're certainly weaving some beautiful words."

Steve sighed. "And you don't believe a bit of it, do you?"

"No," said the dragon, shaking its tremendous head from side to side. "But you're certainly fascinating enough to be worth keeping around for a while longer."

Steve smiled. "In that case, let's get to know each other," he said.

* * *

Sif lifted herself onto the ledge, and she saw Stephen, calmly sitting and talking to the dragon.

"Hi, Sif. How sharp is your sword?"

"Sharp," she said, frowning. "Why?"

"Do you think I could borrow it?"

She eyed the dragon warily before answering. "Yes," she answered. "What have you been up to? I was worried."

"Just getting to know Reginunn, here," he answered. "He's not as bad a guy as you might think."

"Is that so?" Sif inquired. "Then why do you need my blade?"

"Well, he's got a bit of a problem," Steve said, gesturing to the dragon's chest. "I'm no surgeon, but I thought maybe I could help him out."

Sif blinked. Then she addressed the dragon. "Your name is Reginunn?" she asked.

"Yes, my lady," said the dragon. "And you would be Sif? Your betrothed has told me much about you."

"He has?"

"Yeah, we had a lot of time to chat," Steve said. "But that stone is apparently really uncomfortable. So maybe we should get started?"

Sif began unbuckling her sword belt. "You know if you do this, there is a chance that the challenge will not be decided in your favor?"

Stephen sighed. "That might be true. But Sif, I have to do this. It wouldn't be right for me to win any other way."

Sif handed over the sword. They held each other's eyes for a long moment. "Sometimes I wonder how you can be so noble," she said. "If Asgard doesn't recognize your greatness...then I no longer wish to be part of Asgard."

His eyes widened. "You don't have to do that. This is your home."

"Perhaps it is," she said. "And perhaps it is not."

* * *

"I've completed your challenge," Steve said to Odin as soon as they entered the hall.

"Have you?" The good looked at him with a disbelieving eye.

"He did," Sif said defiantly. "I did nothing but lend him my blade."

"And he slew the dragon?" Fandral asked, full of curiosity about the tension in the room.

"No one did," Odin said, voice deep and dark. "The beast lives." He made a beckoning gesture, and Muninn landed on the Allfather's shoulder, speaking into his ear. Odin's eye widened as the story was told.

"He's not a beast," Steve said. "Also, I'd like to speak to you about your policies regarding dragons."

Odin pondered for a long moment.

"Your solution was unorthodox," the god said at last, "but if you have the gem, I cannot fault you. As for my policies? That is, perhaps, a discussion for later, when you have earned a place in my court."

Steve's jaw set, but he nodded.

"Once the court is summoned, I will give my judgement of your progress in the challenges," Odin said, and he was ushered out.

* * *

Later that day, Odin stood in front of his throne, with the court arrayed below. Stephen stood before him, the artifact in his hands. Odin took the stone and examined it.

"You have completed the challenge set before you," he intoned. "But not in the manner that was expected." Odin looked down, not precisely in disapproval, but in puzzlement and determination.

"Because there is concern that the first challenge did not test your strength as a warrior as much as it was meant to, the second challenge will be a simple fight, you matched against the strongest warrior Asgard has to offer. You will stand against Thor, so that we can see the might of your skill in battle."

Steve nodded in acceptance.

* * *

It was Sunday when Stephen, Sif, and Fandral returned to Earth and to the tower, and they found Thor, Jane, Darcy, Clint and Natasha all gathered in the kitchen, making and eating variations of homemade nachos. Thor and Clint seemed to be the ringleaders, Clint suggesting different combinations of ingredients and Thor enthusiastically preparing and tasting them. The others were simply watching and nibbling and occasionally giggling. Thor looked up when they entered.

"Ah, Stephen," he said. "How go the challenges?"

"Well enough, I think," Steve answered. "I don't think I'm quite what Odin expected when he set the first one up. But I did what he asked."

"The Allfather calls what he did 'the easy way out,'" Sif spat. "Believe me when I say that the path Stephen undertook was in no way _easy._"

"There seems to be a great tale there in need of telling," Thor said. "But perhaps not now. What brings you to Earth before the challenges have been completed?"

"The Allfather wishes to ensure that the second challenge is a test of Stephen's ability as a fighter," Fandral said. "He has decreed single combat against Asgard's most capable warrior." Fandral smirked. "That, of course, being you."

"I must to Asgard, then," he said, glancing at Jane. "When is this combat?"

"Two days," Sif answered. "You shall have time to prepare."

"Good," said Thor, but he pulled Jane into an embrace anyway, as if he already missed her, his latest half-finished nacho concoction forgotten.

"You have to defeat Thor?" Natasha asked, frowning.

"I'm not sure," Steve answered. "I think they just want to make sure my combat skills are tested to their fullest."

"It would be unfair otherwise," Sif said. "No other petitioner has faced such a challenge. But we will not know until the Allfather officially issues the challenge. He will want to speak of it first to Thor."

Fandral cleared his throat. "And these are the challenges put forth for warriors, not for prospective wives. Those tend to be considerably less...violent."

Sif turned on Fandral with a questioning frown. "I dislike your tone, Fandral. Each petitioner receives challenges appropriate to their skills. The most important quality to be tested is always bravery."

"Oh, I think the challenges appropriate enough for him," Fandral said.

"Then what? If you have some question for me, speak plainly!"

"I don't see what this gets you, in the end," Fandral said. "Playing this game? What do you expect to gain?"

"It's not a game," Sif said, nearly growling.

"You believe it yourself?" Fandral looked at her with confusion and an edge of pity. "You are a remarkable warrior, Sif. But really. Just because you've managed to trick some poor human fellow into going along with this sleight of words, won't make him any less your husband. And it wouldn't be right to abandon your duties as wife."

Sif looked ready to tear his throat out, but she did not know how to answer.

Darcy stepped up, standing between Sif and Fandral. "That was out of line."

Fandral eyed her. "What business is this of yours? Let the gods talk, and attend to your mortal business."

Darcy set her jaw before speaking again. "Okay, let me tell you what is my business. I don't know what kind of manners they teach on Asgard but here you just don't say that shit to people. Not when you're in their house accepting their hospitality. And this is Steve's house and as far as we're concerned it's Sif's house now too. So you don't get to stand there and insult them."

Fandral raised his eyebrows at her, feigning concern. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression. But it seems I must tell you bluntly. Our night together meant nothing, and it does not mean you can dictate my opinions."

Darcy shook her head. "No, sorry, you've completely missed the point. I'm a big girl and I can tell when something is a one night stand thanks - and by the way, now you've made sure I wouldn't sleep with you again in a million zillion years - but this is my business because you are disrespecting my friends Steve and Sif - and oh, by the way, my friends Tony and Josh - just because they don't fit into your stupid ass ideas of what a relationship should be, and that doesn't mean you get to diss them. Not on _our_ turf."

Clint clapped. "Go, Darcy," Jane cheered.

Fandral drew himself up, narrowing his eyes at Darcy. "I will not allow a mere mortal to speak to me so."

Darcy laughed maliciously. "Oh, I am not just some mortal. I am an Avenger, and if we fight together again, you had _better_ learn to trust that I know what I'm doing because it could save your _life._ Now step off or I will turn you into a houseplant. Thor knows I'm capable of it."

Fandral looked to Thor, who nodded gravely. "Rose Witch is indeed an adept sorceress, specializing in life force and form changes. I would advise you not to anger her further."

Fandral gave Thor a disgusted look before turning and marching out to the terrace.

Sif just stood, in touched appreciation. "Darcy...I thank you. Very few would defend me in that way."

Darcy looked slightly embarrassed at the naked gratitude on Sif's face. "No problem. Like I said, it was just as much for Josh and Tony as it was for you. And for me. Now that I know what a disgusting creep he is, I don't want him anywhere near me." She scowled. "He thought I was swooning over him because of the god thing? Bitch, I know gods, aliens and billionaires. I'm not impressed. Mostly he was just hot and single, and now I know why." She pouted. "I really need a reliable fuck buddy."

That made Steve blush, but he didn't look disapproving. He really did agree that ideally, relationships were only the business of the people in them.

"I'm sorry," he told Sif. "I really didn't want to believe that people in Asgard would react that way. And I know he's a friend."

"Not anymore," she said forcefully. "I never knew how he felt. He stands beside me in battle easily enough, but in the world of men and women, it seems, he has simply been waiting for me to fall, as so many women have fallen before him." She scowled. "I would never have succumbed to his charms, for I knew well how little it would have meant to him. I did not have a problem with that until I realized how little _I_ would mean to him if I did."

"Right," said Darcy. "Sex is just sex, but people are people. You gotta have respect."

"Just so," said Sif.

Meanwhile the assassins had gone back to the serious business of eating nachos while the cheese was still hot, and Jane had pulled Thor aside to speak quietly to him.

"Thor, what are the challenges?"

"To become a citizen of Asgard." He looked at her seriously. "I have been meaning to discuss this with you, as I would happily bring you to Asgard as a petitioner. But I know that you have a life here, and I would not take you away from that." He sat down on a sofa, and held out his arms for her to take up her customary position in his lap, and wrapped them around her when she took it. "I will let you decide the course of your life. Only...I wish for you to face the challenges, gain the rights of citizenship, so that you may eat the golden apples. So that I might not lose you. But I know that if I push you, I will lose you so much the faster."

"Oh." Jane looked at him. "I've been selfish, haven't I? I've only got this one lifetime, and I'm spending it doing the things that I want to do, and just expecting you to be there."

"It gladdens me to see you happy in your work," he said. "But it does trouble me that I cannot see you more."

She frowned thoughtfully. "I wouldn't mind living forever," she said. "But I'm not so sure about the whole 'citizen of Asgard' thing. From what Loki has said...and now Sif...it doesn't seem like a very nice place."

"I still consider Asgard my home," Thor said heavily. "But there are problems there. The more time I spend here on Earth, the more clearly I see that. I hope one day I can rule Asgard wisely and help to show its citizens to have more respect for different types of people and ways of living. But for now, I cannot fault you for wanting no part of it."

Jane put her arms around Thor's neck, and kissed his nose lightly. "I didn't say _no,_" she told him. "Just let me think about it for a while. Living forever is definitely something I'm interested in. It would be worth a lot."

Thor's face lit up in a hopeful smile. "Whatever you decide," he told her, "remember that I love you, and any time you choose to spend in my presence is precious to me."

"I will," she said, curling up against his chest. "I love you too, you know. I just have so much I want to do."

"I know," he said, running his hand over her hair. "And your sense of purpose is one of the things I love about you. You live faster and brighter than any on Asgard." He paused thoughtfully. "I can only imagine what would happen if you set your mind to changing theirs. If, some day, you would agree to be my queen, I believe you would be extraordinary at it."

Jane laughed a little nervously. "Well, I don't know about that. I'm not really the best at people stuff, most of the time." She snuggled into his chest. "But I'll think about it."

* * *

The next day was Monday, and Jane was back at work, of course. Thor, his mind heavy with thoughts, went to see the same person he always asked when he had such worries. The same person, in a different skin, with a different name, in a different culture and context. But still, it made him feel more at ease to know he had Loki's - Joshua's counsel.

"What Stephen and Sif are doing for each other - it makes me think."

"And we all know what trouble you have with that," Joshua answered with a mocking but warm smile. "Come, sit. Tell me."

However he insisted, whatever color his skin might be, Thor knew the truth. This man was his brother.

"I am glad they have found each other. If he should fail the challenges, he will still live more than a mortal life. They will have each other, for a long time."

Thor collapsed into a chair, sighing a long sigh.

"How do you do it, Br-" Thor shut his eyes in pain. "How do you do it, Loki? Joshua? Look at the one you love every day and know that they are mortal? That they can slip away at any time, that they will before the century is out?"

Loki looked sadly at his brother. "I couldn't," he admitted finally.

Thor looked at him in utter confusion. "What could you mean by that? I know that you love Tony. I saw the proof when you stood before Thanos and bit into the silver apple. And he is human, the same as Jane, no matter the machines he builds for himself."

Loki smiled, somehow expressing dozens of things at once, at the same time soft, wistful and sly.

"Not anymore. That was not the only magic apple I have taken from Asgard since Tony and I met."

Thor's face filled with dawning understanding, something hopeful and at the same time concerned.

"You didn't _steal_ it?!"

"The line between _steal_ and _trick out of_ has always been so hard to pin down, don't you find?"

"Loki, that is strictly forbidden. You know that. Giving the apples to someone who is not a citizen of Asgard or Vanaheim? People have been put to death for that."

"And what if I think it worth the price? What if the only reason I value my life now is because he came into it? Thor, you should know by now that I don't let rules stop me from doing what I want."

Thor sighed. "Apples cannot be allowed to become known outside the realms of the gods. The order of Asgard is too important to risk. You know this."

"Then there is one thing that you and Jane have in common, and you and I do not." Loki looked at Thor evenly.

"And what is that?" Thor asked.

"You and Jane each have something that you value more highly than each other. You and Jane are noble. I am not. Asgard's throne may topple, for all I care, if it means Tony Stark will be safe." Loki laughed, low and slightly ominous. "Besides, Asgard's brand of order was never one I cared for. Its citizens might be better off _without_ that sense of stability and continuity your father is constantly going on about."

"Do you really hate Asgard so much?"

"Why not, Thor? Asgard hates me. Asgard would throw me aside when I only ever did what I thought best for Asgard. I am _done_ trying to appease that order, because it is an order that has no place for one such as me. And so if I have found a new place, a new way of life to protect, how can you blame me?"

"Loki. You were always telling me to think of the bigger scope, the longer term. Now you would put one man above the world where we were raised?"

"Not the world. Not the people. Only the throne, and look how delicate that is, that one broken engagement, one stolen piece of fruit, would throw it into such peril. People, I would protect if I could, and forgive me if I have more faith in a man who lifted himself up through sheer will and force of creation than I do in a _chair_. Because that's all that it is, the throne of Asgard, and once you have sat in it, you may realize how very precarious a position it is."

Loki was breathing hard; he'd worked this up to be quite a satisfying fight. But now there was silence. Thor wasn't fighting back. He was staring at Loki with something like revelation.

"You have _faith._ In Iron Man."

"Yes?" Loki was thrown off guard by the intensity of the question.

"When I gained humility, I learned that I am no better than any other being. Thus we are equals, myself, Jane, any citizen of Asgard or Midgard." Thor looked at Loki with that new intensity. "But you - you have instead raised Tony Stark in your estimation to the level of gods."

Loki considered this. He began to smile.

"Perhaps, then, it is this that separates us: You have come to believe that no one is above the law. I have come to believe that everyone is. Oh, not to the point of discounting consequences. But if no one will stand up and say that they know better than the person who made the law, then the law will never change." He shook his head at Thor. "I do what I want, and then accept the consequences. So do we all, but in this, at least, I may be the most honest of men." He leaned forward, eye to eye with Thor. "So, yes. We are all of us gods. We have the ability to shape worlds. Aesir, Vanir, Jotunn, elf, dwarf, human. Dragon," he said, grinning. "All of us are equal, and equally powerful, if we but know, if we but _see._ And the throne of Asgard, your precious order, keeps the Aesir blind. Happy, perhaps. Peaceful. Not powerful. Not _safe._"

Thor still listened intently, eyes wide. Would wonders never cease.

"I think you will see something of what I mean when Stephen truly makes a home for himself in Asgard. You have heard the story of Captain America, I am sure, and thought it the tale of a man who becomes a god. But Stephen Rogers was already a god, aware of his own power. The power of persistence, of creation, of knowledge. The power of not sitting down when you know you can stand up. He is a god, the likes of which the Aesir have never seen. And he had that in him from a time long before he was Captain America, and he will have it in him long after America has ceased to be."

Loki stopped and took a breath.

"Now Iron Man, that is a story of a man becoming a god."

His eyes narrowed slightly, burning somehow simultaneously hot and cold.

"Do you realize the power he has exercised on this planet? The changes he has caused? All because one day he was shown his own influence, his own godhood, and on that day, he decided that _he_ would be the one to determine how it was used."

Loki blinked once, slow and steady, red eyes clear. "Yes, I put my faith in Tony Stark. Because in a world of absolute order, there is always someone at the top, someone with nowhere to look to for guidance. And that is an unenviable position, a position that destroys the soul. But in a world of chaos, there will never be a shortage of people standing up and trying to change that world." He smiled, a sharp, sparkling thing. "Tony Stark is the god who can use his power, change his world, without controlling it, without adding the slightest bit of order to its magnificent disorder. Tony Stark is the god who can do anything he decides to do, and then step back and let the world go on around him. Tony Stark is extraordinary, and he has my faith."

Thor was, for once, at a loss for words.

"I knew you loved," he said finally. "I did not know all that that meant."

"As I said. The difference between us is that you believe in something larger than your love."

"And I thought that meant you were selfish and small. I am sorry."

"But I am selfish," Loki said. "I would keep the life I have on this world, rather than struggle to make Asgard better. And perhaps the best way for you to lead Asgard is to be a little selfish as well."

"I have been," Thor said. "I have abandoned my home in order to spend every moment I can with Jane."

"Think larger," Loki replied. "Think of the bigger scope, the longer term." He smiled wickedly. "What do you want your life to be, and how can you create that?"

"I wish Jane to be my queen, to sit beside me on the throne of a changed Asgard." He sighed. "But I see no way of doing that without pulling her away from the life she loves."

"There is always a way, if you look hard enough." Loki sighed. "If nothing else, remember that Hel would be happy to have her. That would give you time, the time you wish to decide, to plan. Perhaps the time you need to change Asgard."

"Helheim." Thor frowned. "Would not that be pulling her away from her life just as surely?"

"You should have seen Tony's face when I explained what Helheim is in words he could understand. He was entirely fascinated." Loki smiled. "If I know Jane at all, she will agree to a visit, and soon she will be losing track of months passing by. The combination of such a well of knowledge with the scientific impossibility that is Helheim's existence? It is the surest trap for great minds."

Thor was quiet for a moment. "I will think on it," he said. "Thank you. Joshua."

Loki smiled. "And let that be proof to you that even the most set of an Asgardian's habits can be changed. You are welcome, Thor. I would not take on Asgard again, but I will, gladly, help you to change it."

* * *

Later that day, the four returned to Asgard, Fandral and the others pointedly not talking to each other. He went off in one direction, perhaps to find Volstagg or Hogunn and complain. Steve and Sif lingered in the streets on the way to the palace, but Thor went ahead, eager to speak to Odin.

"Hello, Father. I have answered your summons and await your command."

Odin smiled at his son. "Thank you. I require your help with the second of the challenges Stephen Rogers is to face."

"What are the rules of this challenge to be? A demonstration of ability?"

"I am inclined to require that he best you in combat. That would win him citizenship."

"This is not a fair test," Thor growled.

"Perhaps not, but your friend has done this to himself," Odin told Thor.

"How?" Thor asked angrily.

"He has declared his intention to be the wife of one of Asgard's warriors. You know the people will not believe in his fitness to be a citizen unless they are shown something they cannot deny. You must fight him, using all your strength. They will know if you let him win."

Thor scowled. "You may have a point. Though I would rather change the minds of the people than set an unfair challenge."

"if I knew how to do that," Odin told his heir, "then kingship would sit considerably lighter on me."

Thor sighed. "I do not wish to hurt the Captain. He is my teammate, and my friend." He paused to think. "I will fight with intention to win, with Mjolnir in my hand, but I will not call lightning upon him."

"What of his weaponry?" Odin asked. "He carries no blade, only his shield. What do you suggest, to make the fight even?"

"The shield he bears is extraordinary, and part of him as Mjolnir is part of me. It is unlike anything else that Midgard has produced. I would guess that he will choose to wield no other weapon. He is trained in the use of Midgardian firearms, as well, but those he would not use against me, I think, as I withhold lightning against him."

Odin looked at his son. "You hold this man in high regard, then," he said.

"Very much so," answered Thor. "He has a chance, I think, of besting me. I would that it were better. He would make an excellent citizen of Asgard."

"But, as a wife? As the mistress of a home and caretaker of children? If he is such a warrior, why does he not petition as a warrior?"

"Because that is not what he wants," Thor answered simply.

"Asgard will not easily accept what he wants."

"Change is never easy," the prince replied.

Odin pressed his lips together as he considered the implications of that statement. Then, he let himself smile.

* * *

The two Avengers faced each other in a large arena, an audience arrayed around them. It was just like sparring, Steve reminded himself, except the stakes were real.

Thor swung and Steve dodged. Steve threw his shield and hit Thor in the head, but the god barely moved. Thor jumped, and Steve caught and put up his shield, and the contact of the two metals sparked and rang through the enormous space. The crowd fell into a startled silence, then cheered.

They dodged and blocked and took each other's blows until they were both growing tired, but of course Stephen was tiring faster. He took a risk, throwing his shield to ricochet off the walls and hit Thor in the back of the head, coming in close to distract the thunder god. Thor took the opportunity to swing, and Mjolnir took Steve down without a moment of resistance. A moment later the shield found its target, causing Thor to stumble, but not fall. While Steve was still down, Thor placed Mjolnir over the star on his chest with a look of regret.

"I am sorry," Thor said, "but I fear you must yield."

Stephen felt the hammer's weight on his chest. It wasn't crushing him, but he didn't think he'd be able to move it. He wrapped his hand around the handle anyway.

Suddenly the weight became less. He lifted Mjolnir easily. The room was full of hushed noises, awe and disbelief, as Steve stood up. Thor's eyes were round. They were filled with wonder and pain.

Somehow it didn't seem right to be holding Thor's weapon. He held it out in the thunder god's direction. "Here. Take it," he said, and Thor did, seemingly in a daze. "Ready?" Steve asked, retrieving his own shield, waiting to start the fight until Thor could regain his focus.

When Thor nodded at him, he began moving again, taking a different approach. He took advantage of his superior dexterity to get in close, avoid Thor's blows while delivering his own not-very-substantial ones, and just generally be annoying. After a while, he moved back again, pretending to be more tired than he was, and presenting a tempting target.

Thor threw Mjolnir.

Steve dodged, threw his shield to bounce into the back of Thor's head again, and this time the god fell to one knee. Steve pressed his advantage, grabbing Thor's hair with one hand and his right wrist with another, pressing him to the floor and putting a knee against his neck.

Without the use of his right hand, it would be difficult for Thor to summon Mjolnir. Steve was certain that Thor could break free - the super-soldier's strength was significantly less than the god's - but instead Thor cleared his throat, and said loudly, "I yield."

Stephen immediately let go and stepped back.

There was muttering in the huge arena, but there was also cheering. Sif ran up to him and embraced him, saying, "Well done! That was marvelous!" She pulled back to grin up at him. "You have more than proven yourself, I am sure. Do you know what it means that you are able to lift Mjolnir?"

"I'm not sure," Stephen answered. "I heard it had a spell put on it so that Thor couldn't lift it unless he was ready? And other than him, I've never seen anyone pick it up."

"The spell is still upon it," she said. "Only those worthy to wield the powers of Thor may lift it."

Stephen was speechless for a moment. "People have all these ideas about how good I am," he said. "And now it's not just people, but dragons and magic hammers, apparently. I guess all I can do is try to live up to it all."

Sif put a hand to his face. "You do. Stephen Rogers, you are the best of men."

The noisy arena faded away as they looked at each other, leaving just the two of them. They had made it. They were here, in Asgard, together, and no one could say they did not belong.


	4. Rites Trappings Appearances Truths

**More Than Heroes**

**Chapter 4: Rites; Trappings; Appearances; Truths**

"Am I going to have to wear a dress?"

Sif laughed, and the sound was a rare and beautiful thing. "You may wear whatever you like, as long as you look pretty in it," she said. "But you will be the one to wear the bridal crown, and I will carry the sword."

Steve raised his eyebrows, eyes shining with humor. "What are you going to wear?"

Sif thought. "My armor, to the ceremony, but a gown to the feast," she said decisively.

"It would be kind of odd to wear the Captain America suit to get married in, I guess," he said thoughtfully. "I wonder if I could scare up a dress uniform. I wonder if I'm still authorized to wear one."

"Wear what you wear to fight," she told him. "It symbolizes who you are, and your homeland. This is a great alliance we are building."

"All right," he nodded. "But if you're changing for the party, so will I. If not dress blues, then a tuxedo."

"Are there any other traditions of Midgard you want to uphold or turn on their heads?" Sif asked, smirking.

He considered for a moment. "I'm already moving into your house. Do I get carried over the threshold, too?"

"Oh, most definitely." Sif grinned. "We can't have you tripping."

They laughed and talked for hours, and true to their unique partnership, Steve ended up with most of the decisions about color and design - Steve would be dealing with the invitations, for example - although there wasn't much else, the ceremony being in the palace and the most obvious color theme being gold. Frigga would allow no less, knowing the importance of their union in all kinds of ways.

They had talked to SHIELD already, and she had an official identity and green card so that they could get a New York marriage license, which they'd officially use by marrying on Earth between the main ceremony on Asgard and their honeymoon in Tony's new hotel.

It was Bruce, interestingly enough, who first came to Steve and expressed concern at the pace of events.

"I'm not one to criticize anyone's life decisions, I just wanted to make sure you've thought this over." Bruce chuckled a bit. "I guess I've sort of been elected the team parent, even though some of us are centuries old - technically you're almost a century - and I'm barely forty-five. But you're actually pretty young, by the years of experience. So. Why are you in a rush? Neither of you is getting older very fast. Two months is a pretty short time to know someone before marrying them."

Steve smiled at Bruce, on some level just glad to be included in the group that the scientist looked out for. He'd always noticed Bruce hovering over Tony and Loki, Peter, Darcy, occasionally Clint, protectively the way he'd remembered his parents and later Bucky doing for him. He hadn't been sure for a long time whether Bruce included Steve in his little family or whether the scientist resented his position of authority or association with the U. S. Army. The man was hard to read, when he wasn't big and green.

"I know it's not exactly how things are done these days," he said to Bruce. "I've seen the statistics. People waiting longer, not staying together if things don't go how they expected. But I've always felt like I'd know the right woman when I saw her. I've felt that way twice, and I don't think I've been wrong yet."

Bruce frowned thoughtfully at him, chewing on his lip. "Okay. So why not wait?" he said.

"There are a lot of reasons. I want Sif to get the life she deserves, and if she's sure after this long, and she's lived hundreds of years, why shouldn't I be sure too? And, I'm kind of old fashioned, I guess, because there are... other things... that I don't want to wait too long for, and in my mind they still sort of belong in marriage. I understand why that's not really a thing people do anymore, but it still feels right to me."

Bruce nodded, waiting expectantly. "And the other reason?"

"Because the first time, I waited too long."

Bruce looked at Steve for a moment, and then he clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, I'll be the last person to tell you that lightning doesn't strike twice, or that there are always more opportunities. There are a lot of things I hoped for once, and that's all gone now, so I can't fault you for leaping at the opportunity when you have it. I'd be glad to be surrounded by people who are living the lives they want."

Steve looked at Bruce now, concerned. "You really don't have a lot of hope, do you?"

Bruce shook his head. "I'm content with what I have. I don't need anything else."

Steve nodded, though he still looked at Bruce dubiously, somewhat sadly. "I wish... I could have saved Erskine. I know it would have changed things for a lot of people."

"I don't get to dwell on the past," said Bruce. "I don't get to think about the future. Most days, right now is just about all I can handle. So do me a favor and don't regret anything about who you are and what you've done or not done, and I'll try to do the same. Because Captain America wishing he'd done better is definitely not what I need to hear about right now."

"All right," Steve said, acquiescing. "Just... if you ever do need anything, let me help you."

Bruce laughed dryly. "I was supposed to be helping you, here. All right, I give. I could be happier, and if I see an opportunity, I'll take it. Follow your example. And I do hope all this works out for you."

"For us both," Steve said, determined.

"I wouldn't bet on it, if I were you," the scientist said. "But thanks anyway."

Steve shook his head, and returned to what he'd been doing.

* * *

Thor sat silently, looking contemplatively at Mjolnir.

"A tool to build." He looked solemnly up at his father, who, as he often did, was using silence as a tool to elicit a thoughtful response. "I never did learn to listen to you as well as I might. Perhaps I am not the one best suited to hold this hammer." Thor sighed. "Being a hero in these realms is far more complicated than I could have ever imagined."

His father spoke, finally. "If you were not the right person to wield it, it would not answer to your hand."

"So, is the Captain the right person as well?"

"Perhaps," Odin answered. "In some times and places."

"If I were to give Mjolnir to him, perhaps he could truly build something," said Thor.

"He has his own place, his own weapons, and his own mission," Odin replied. "I think he would not so easily welcome the weight of the hammer and all it represents. And what he would build with it would not be what the heir to the throne of Asgard would build."

"Perhaps it would be better," said Thor.

"Who in the Realms knows Asgard as you do?" Odin asked him. "You have been trained to know its people, its politics, its problems and its triumphs. If you are not suited to decide what Asgard needs, then none are."

"Then I think none are," Thor said. "I still have so much to learn. I may know how Asgard is, but I cannot yet imagine what it should be, or the path we must tread to get there."

Odin looked at him for a long moment, then answered. "Then go," he said. "Learn the things you feel you must learn. I wish you success. The path to wisdom is not easy, and it never ends."

* * *

Before Steve and Sif left for Asgard for the main ceremony, they went to the courthouse to get a New York marriage license.

"Something about this seems more real to me than all the preparation for the blessing on Asgard," Steve said. "It's probably because this is more like what I expected to do, getting married someday. But also, here, there's something about paper. It has a sort of power, separate from the way objects like weapons have power. Paper can tell you so much; it can change the way you see things."

"I never would have believed how much until I met you," Sif replied. "But when I saw you pour meaning into your drawings, it changed the course of my entire life." She smiled at him. "What meaning does this paper carry for you?"

"When something's written down on a form like this, it's on the record. It makes it official," he said. "It means that anyone who comes into this courthouse will be able to look it up and see that today we came into this building, and we wrote on this paper that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together."

Steve filled out most of the form, looking at the ID card that SHIELD had given Sif. "You've only got one name?" he asked. "Well, with our years of birth, it certainly won't be the strangest thing written here."

"As Thor has remarked, on Asgard we do not share your habit for having many names, one to suit every situation. I am Sif, or I am Lady Sif. I forbade anyone to use my patronymic centuries ago, and have felt no need to replace it with anything."

"Ah, didn't work for the image, I guess?"

"It was no use to me, being always a reminder that I was my father's daughter. I needed to stand on my own."

"I guess we do have a lot of names, here. Let me see. Both my identities have at least three variations just for length, and then they can be combined in various ways. For legal purposes, though, this is it." He wrote 'Steven Rogers' neatly along the line.

"Oh!" said Sif. "You spell your name differently than every other Stephen I have known of."

"I've known a few of each," he said, amused. "It's a little bit strange that it hasn't come up until now, but then I wasn't sure if you had any other names until today. Some things just don't seem that important." He looked sidelong at her. "Knew a lot of Stephens when you were on Earth before?"

"It was a common name in Norway a thousand or so years ago," she said. "Thor would insist on pronouncing it Step-hen, as if it were an Asgardian name. After long enough, it caught on. Midgardian language is so very malleable."

Steve laughed. "Yes, it very much is. Just the seventy years I was gone, and there are so many words I don't recognize. It's one of those dizzying things. At least my name is the way I always remember it being." He looked to her curiously. "That reminds me. Do you want to take my surname on Earth? You certainly don't have to, but people will probably call you that anyway, because it's traditional."

Sif frowned a little. "Then I would have a second name again, a reminder that I belong to your household. I did not like that the first time, and I am not sure I like it now."

"No," said Steve, putting solid hands on her shoulders. "You don't belong to anyone. Not here, not on Asgard, not now, not ever. And if you don't want to take my name, that's fine. You can just be Sif, and Sif is who I want you to be, and nothing else." He smiled encouragingly. "All right? No one owns anyone. We're just two people who love each other."

"But..." she narrowed her eyes, thinking. "With all I have asked of you, to be a traditional wife on Asgard, subject to me as head of household, if only in appearance... how could I do any less for you? Will it not make you look less of a warleader here, where your own people watch you as closely as Asgard watches me, if I refuse to adhere to your customs?"

"No," he said. "At least not to the people who matter. I don't care about the opinions of people who think men who listen to women are somehow any less men. They are bullies, and I never give in to bullies. I only care about inspiring people to lead good lives, and the way to do that is teamwork, depending on the strength of the people around you. I'm going to make sure people know that you're a partner, that you are your own person and I love you for it."

"I am brave on the field of battle, but I envy such a stout heart as yours in the face of society. You inspire me," she told him. "I was content with the place that I carved for myself in the world where I was born, but you make me imagine a more perfect world."

He smiled and put a hand under her chin, looking at her brave and determined face. "I'd given up for a while on things ever being perfect," he said. "But when you're with me, I can imagine it too." He kissed her, softly but hungrily, and she could feel the truth of his words, and she knew then that she had chosen wisely, that there could be no better man than this.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Tony asked as they packed to leave for Asgard with the other Avengers.

"No," Loki said. "But I owe Sif this much. We will try."

"You think there'll be problems?"

"There may be," Loki admitted. "But...just a minute...let me see what I can do to make them less likely." The Jotunn slipped into the bathroom, and Tony could hear the buzz of an electric device. Three minutes later, curiosity was about to overcome him when Loki stepped out, looking like himself in most ways but also somehow incredibly different.

Ruddy brown eyes with wide human pupils, a slightly greener skin tone with no lines, some changes to the bone structure of his face, all differences subtle enough that the Three would not remark on them but that made it much more difficult to see him as a frost giant. But the kicker was the haircut. Shorter even than Tony's, it was a scant inch at the front. Tony ruffled it ruefully.

"That's...different," he said, raising his eyebrows.

"It's not my preference, either, but it does give verisimilitude to my role as one who embraces the culture of Earth. And to those who know me, it will send a message."

"Really? I know Thor wouldn't be the same lion without his glorious mane, but I'm guessing there's more to hair on Asgard than just being pretty. What's this say, kitten?" Tony ruffled the soft black fuzz again. Maybe it wasn't so bad.

"It tells them that I will not live by their conventions. No Asgardian of the court would be seen with their hair so shorn. It is the mark of a servant."

"Didn't Sif say something about you cutting off all her hair one time as a joke?"

"And she would not come out of her chambers until I had remedied it." Loki's mouth quirked. "Seeing me like this, in front of the court? It will also serve as a sort of belated apology." He closed his eyes, suppressing laughter. "I'll award myself bonus points if it causes her to laugh at an inopportune moment. Say, during the ceremony."

Tony shook his head, eyes sparkling. "What is wrong with you, it's like you have no respect. I'm sure it's a deep, meaningful, pompous ceremony too."

"Oh, absolutely," Loki said with a grin. "Now let's get dressed. What shall we wear to such a serious, solemn affair?"

Tony chuckled, then gave Loki's altered form another contemplative look. "Hmm, your wardrobe might need a bit of tweaking to go with this coloration."

"Perhaps," Loki answered. "I'll see what I can find."

Tony and Loki dived into the monstrous walk-in that held all their clothes. Tony took forever picking out a shirt but ended up with plain white, and black pants and vest, instead picking a plum-colored jacket and silver tie to give his outfit the necessary edge of ridiculousness.

The suit Loki ended up in was a deep blue, with a slight luster that meant in some places it was near black while in others it had a sheen of aqua. The shirt was a creamy color with a hint of peach and the tie was one of Tony's, a rusty red.

"How does it work?" he asked Tony when they both stood in front of the mirror again.

"Delicious," Tony said, running a hand over the sleek fabric of the jacket.

"Pay attention," Loki admonished.

"Hmm," Tony said, looking over the effect with more care. "The tie could match your eyes more closely; that would make it perfect," Tony proclaimed, then started pressing soft kisses to Loki's neck.

"Well, then, how about this?" Loki changed his eye color two shades and the tie made them light up.

Tony looked. "Nope, that's officially too perfect. We're going to need to strip you down and start over."

Loki laughed and kissed the inventor.

* * *

The Avengers arrived and were told that Odin would like an opportunity to meet them before the ceremony. Everyone tried not to look at Loki, but Tony gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

They entered a room, and all worries were seemingly justified when Odin looked at the approaching group with a widening eye and rumbled, "LOKI."

But when, the next moment, Frigga rushed over and hugged them, crying, "Joshua! Tony! It's good to see you again!" they relaxed a little.

Odin gave his wife an incredulous look.

"Why do you call him by this Midgardian name?" he said, frowning.

"Because he asked me to," Frigga answered simply.

Odin looked at her, then shook his head. He fixed Loki with a glare. "How did you get past Heimdall? The terms of your banishment are clear."

"Perhaps not as clear as you intended," Loki replied. "And it may have escaped your attention, but it was brought quite sharply to mine that Heimdall's loyalty to his king extends to the letter of the command, but not necessarily to the spirit."

Odin narrowed his eye. "What do you mean?"

"Heimdall does what he sees best. And he and I have an understanding. My name is Joshua Albastru and I am an Avenger. I am here only to witness my fellow Avenger's wedding. Fair day, Your Majesty." Loki bowed low.

Odin blinked. The Midgardian clothing, the bow of a foreign warrior to a king, the changed face - the shorn hair! - all spoke clearly of a renunciation, not only of princehood, but of citizenship.

"And the people of Earth see fit to allow you these freedoms, after your deeds there?"

The Avengers nodded, Bruce and Natasha solemnly, Darcy, Peter and Tony with defiant grins, and Clint, after a pause, decisively.

Odin scowled. Then he sighed. "Then you may stay, for the blessing. But you will not reveal yourself and make me look a fool."

Loki flicked a glance in his direction that was eloquent with annoyance. "It is you who does this to yourself, Allfather. Do you know how? Not permitting things so important that people will defy you to their last breath in order to have them. It would be better, I think, to be seen as flexible than to be seen as an obstacle in need of breaking."

"You see fit to lecture me, after what you did while you sat on the throne?"

"What I did," said Loki, eyes narrowed. "All I did, I did to make you proud, I did as I thought you would have wanted. I -" Loki cut himself off, anger obvious in the way his fists curled, knuckles protruding. "I am not here to discuss this," he said, turning away.

Tony frowned. "You know what, I could stand to discuss it some more. He's right. You have this whole bluster and authority thing down pat. I've seen a lot of it, actually. It's the socioeconomic equivalent of a nuclear deterrent. You act like you have all the power and no one questions you. But I learned the problem with that the hard way - no matter how much real power you have, someday somebody's gonna come along who can make God bleed."

"Is that a threat?"

"No way. It works while it works and I'm just here for Cap. I'd prefer things stay stable while I'm here without my armor. I'm just pointing out the flaw in your operating model here." Tony walked and moved his hands as he spoke, ending up in Odin's space, disregarding and canceling his dominant body language as he was fond of doing with Thor. He smirked up at the Allfather. "Believe me, I know, it's all about image. There's a lot to gain from an act like that. But infallibility isn't an image with a lot of shelf life. And maybe you are the exception. But in my experience, the longer you're at the top, the harder you fall."

Darcy nodded her agreement as Odin simply glowered. "That is how it works a lot of the time, at least on Earth. The less you let people question you, the more they want to. Although if I see many more of those guards with the blank stares, I'm going to start thinking you put something in the water here to make 'em all creepy and personality-less. Which is one way to do it, I guess." She bit her lip and looked around shiftily, to gauge reaction or possibly to check for brainwashed guards lying in wait to silence her.

Odin ignored Darcy, turning to face Tony again. "I never intended my reign to last indefinitely," he said. "I had meant to hand over the reins to Thor already."

Tony popped his eyes wide at this statement. "Well that's... even worse." He turned away slightly and shook his head. "I mean, it's good in concept. Make your position strong before you step out and let someone else have a chance at it. But here's the thing. You're setting him up for failure. The harder you try for stability, the higher the expectations on Thor. Dynasties don't last forever, especially the ones that don't change with the times. I've been there."

"So have I," said Natasha, strolling closer to the god-king. "I've seen a powerful country fall because once word started to spread that there were problems, everything spiralled out of control. It's not pretty, not for the leaders and not for the people."

"Probably better to have a free press from the beginning," Darcy added. "The Roman Empire got so big and lasted as long as it did because there was so much of that freedom in the early years. But then the emperors got all tetchy, thinking no one could criticize them, and the fall was kinda inevitable after that."

Loki looked on, amused, as his partner and two female shield brothers confronted Odin, and the remaining Avengers looked on in approval, Bruce with his quietly amused smile, Peter with bright interested eyes, Clint with the satisfaction he often wore when Natasha was on the hunt for oblivious douchebags.

"Or perhaps nothing could have stopped it," Natasha continued. "No reign can last forever, I think, not even here. There's always a weakness; everyone slips up."

Odin was now forced to address the women, as Tony had retreated back to Loki's side. He looked at Natasha, eye narrowed slightly, considering. "That is not the case here. Asgard is a civilized world. Now, if you do not cease your threatening, or whatever it is meant to be, I will send you all back to your world."

"Please, pay attention. I didn't threaten anything. I didn't even mention you. Just talking about the way politics work. And speaking of which, the more strongly you deny something, the more likely people are to think it's true. Isn't that funny?" Natasha retreated casually as she said this, a satisfied smile playing on her face.

Darcy seemed to be trying out Tony's 'get in their space and ignore them' tactic as she spoke next. "Speaking of the public's perception of fame and politics, some of the commentary shows have gotten really entertaining. Oh my God, sorry if it's not you, the Daily Show and Colbert Report were the reason I wanted to go into political science. That shit is funny _and_ relevant. And the people with the most successful public images are the ones who can laugh with the people when the people mock some of their more questionable decisions." Darcy turned to Tony. "Like, that interview you did? Genius. Letting Colbert mock your old life? Seriously that was the best thing you could have done for your image right then. Made you look human. Reminded everyone that you were allowed to make mistakes."

Tony grinned. "That was so much fun. You know, now when the robot apocalypse comes, no one can say I didn't warn them."

Darcy chuckled. "So true."

"Wow," said Peter, raising his eyebrows. "I really have to track that down now."

Odin frowned. "You openly invite the mockery of the people of Midgard?"

"Are you kidding?" Tony laughed. "Humans? You couldn't stop them if you tried."

"It's a documented fact," Darcy added. "Anyone else been following Egypt's new comedianews show? It's the greatest thing, and people do them in lots of countries even though in some places they could be executed for it."

Bruce nodded, a small smile on his face, and Peter looked intrigued.

Odin shook his head. "I thought you the Earth's mightiest heroes, the ones the rest must flock behind. You have a strange way of guiding your people," he said.

"Oh, but they don't," Loki said, speaking up again finally. "I, too, made that mistake at first. No one truly leads Midgard. No one truly can. Because their eyes are open to their own power, to their freedom. I thought it chaos, and it often is. But they would not give it up, though it cost them their lives."

"Hey, don't we have a party to go to?" Tony said, trying to maintain the festive atmosphere that had developed.

"Ceremony first," Loki reminded him. "Then drinking and dancing."

"Oh, but wherever I am, it's already a party," Tony said, slipping an arm around Loki. "Now let's go make sure everyone else knows it."

Odin looked as if he regretted inviting the Avengers into his palace already.

* * *

Sif had a grand time during her ritual of purification and preparation. She crouched in what amounted to a tiny temporary steam bath, Volstagg and her father telling her in solemn tones of the responsibilities of an Asgardian husband, and going rather red in the face when it came to saying some of them aloud in front of her.

She wondered how Steve was doing in his own steamy hut, being lectured on wifely duties by Hildegund and Frigga. She thought it probably involved a lot more giggling. She felt a bit bad for him. She had no desire to learn, or even know what was involved in the art of wifing - the finer points of laundry? - but he did seem like the kind of person who might enjoy hearing about that, at least more than she would.

Sif was thoroughly steamed and sluiced, buckled into her armor, and her father presented her with an ancestral sword. He hadn't seemed too concerned about this whole business, now that she thought about it, which was nice. Of course, after the initial embarrassment she'd caused the family when she ran out on her engagement to Thor and announced her intent to become a warrior, and the unmitigated success that venture had turned out to be, she had a feeling that he'd decided it was best not to argue with her about anything.

She smiled as she took the sword from him, grateful to be again entrusted with representing the family in a marriage alliance, even after she had turned her back on that, and all it had meant at the time, the first time. She did love them, and she would do anything to please them as long as it did not jeopardize her own dreams. Looking down at the sword, she thought about what that meant in carrying on with her own family.

Her father hrumphed at her slightly awkwardly, saying, "He does seem... pleasant. And devoted. A good wife, if that is what you choose. I suppose I should say... take care of him?"

She laughed lightly. "We will take care of each other," she told him. "This is a show, none of it a lie, exactly. But in our own house, we will be equals, warriors both and caretakers equally."

He smiled. "Good. I would have someone be there to take care of you."

"Do not _dare_ breathe a word of that to anyone on Asgard," Sif said, suddenly worried.

"No, I would not," he said, and shook his head. "I know you are a warrior. I know what that means. Out here I will do nothing to jeopardize that. But in my house, you are my daughter."

She smiled softly at him. "Thank you," she said.

He shifted somewhat uncomfortably, and then saw something over her shoulder. "All right," he said. "Go to your bride."

Sif turned, and there was Steve, sun shining on his golden hair, white and blue flowers twined into a crown over top of it. His eyes were so blue, caught up by his uniform, and he smiled so sweetly and hesitantly. She could not stop herself from rushing towards him and taking up his hands.

"There you are, my love," she said. "You are the most beautiful sight I have ever seen."

He smiled with more assurance now. "I'd say the same to you," he answered, clasping her hands tightly. "Any second thoughts?"

"Never," she said. "I make a point not to. Second thoughts don't agree with me."

He chuckled brightly in response. "I don't make much space for them in my head either. I'd have ducked out of a lot more fights in my life if I did, probably."

She grinned at him. "Shall we?" she said, gesturing towards the palace, the nearest entrance of which was wide open and waiting for them.

They walked in, hand-in-hand, to the cheering of the witnesses, and soon they stood before Odin. There was to be an exchange of tokens next, and they had chosen rings, since it was among the usual options on Asgard, and familiar to Steve.

They vowed to love each other, to stand by each other, and as they did, their eyes were locked together. When the words were all said, they kissed, and Sif loved how the kiss felt private, intimate, just for them, even among all these winesses. Everything about this, everything about Steve, felt right.

While Odin made a speech which was fairly boring and completely disregarded the fact of which of them was wearing flowers on their head, Sif looked out at the witnesses seated around them. There was her family, and Thor and Jane, Thor looking proud and pleased, Jane, delighted and curious. And there were the Avengers, all, even Loki.

Her eyes widened as she saw him, recognized him, under cerulean skin, Midgardian fashion, short hair and all. She bit her lip to keep from making noise, though she knew not what it would be if she let it free. An exclamation? A laugh? He was here, eyes warm and sparkling with glee, less his hair. How short it was! It was only good fortune, Sif supposed, that Steven kept his hair as long as he did, but short enough for practicality, much like Fandral's. No, Loki's hair today was short enough to mark him a slave, if he were of Asgard. But next to Tony, Clint, Peter and Bruce, dressed like them, he was merely alien.

Sif quirked a smile at him, gave him an acknowledging nod, and returned her attention to Steven. He was watching her with adoring wonder, and as their eyes met, he smiled wider.

As the speech drew to a close, Thor came and brought a pitcher of ale, and they poured cups for each other. Sif toasted to Odin, and Steven to Frigga. Then they drank their cups down, and the ceremony was done, and the whole room cheered.

Sif felt like the smile she wore now was permanent, that it would stay on her face for whole aeons to come. She took hold of Steve and lifted him into the air, spinning him around, and he laughed, recognizing another reversed tradition.

They left the room hand in hand, but separated soon enough, and it was difficult, though they knew it would only be long enough to change clothes.

Steve changed into a white tuxedo, but he kept the flowers in his hair, which made Sif smile with humor when she saw him. Sif put on a gold gown, and the embroidery made it appear to be dripping with gems - although, given that this was Sif, the many layers of skirts were all slit up high in many places, so that it all flowed around her, and would fall away if she needed to move.

Steven's mouth fell open a little when he saw her in it, and he couldn't make his feet move. So Sif came to him and took his hand again, pulling him out into the larger room where the feast had begun.

The music was mostly brass instruments, some percussion, and although the musicians and horns were Asgardian, he had managed to get them some recordings of some of his favorite songs from back home, and they actually replicated the sounds fairly well. Tony did a double-take when he recognized some Mighty Mighty Bosstones horn parts Jarvis had recommended when he'd helped put together the recordings.

They danced joyfully, moving in sync and stealing little touches that built the tension surrounding that night. Eventually they were in each other's arms, kissing deeply, and Steve didn't want to be anywhere else and yet he couldn't stand for this to continue much longer.

"I'm going to go... get some food," he told Sif. Now that he thought about it, he really was hungry. "Do you want me to get you anything?"

She considered him, smiling. "Bring a platter of whatever you find to your taste," she said. "I know exactly what you like on Midgard, because you make it yourself. But here, with the food I grew up with, I am not as sure."

He nodded, squeezing Sif's hand in a promise to return soon. Sif took up his hand and kissed it, then let it go.

He had curious eyes on him from every side, which wasn't something he was altogether unfamiliar with, nor was the variation between concealed scorn and disbelieving admiration. He had a few people clap him on the shoulder and congratulate him on his citizenship, and mention Mjolnir, without referring at all to his marriage. He had a few people eyeing the flowers in his hair with considering frowns or barely suppressed laughter.

He knew the drill. He was here as publicity; that was why many people who were no friends of Sif's were here. This was a show, and he was a performer. But it was, as always, something he would never have agreed to do if it wasn't something he thought would make a difference, make the world better or safer or more friendly. Sure, it was a different world, a different set of reasons peple were staring, but this was what he did.

He smiled at everyone who caught his eye, even the ones that were looking at him like some kind of odd insect. And it wasn't a lie - he didn't like lying much - he really was happy to be here, happy to do what he could for Sif and her world.

Sif, meanwhile, had been waylaid by the Warriors Three, and Volstagg was pounding her on the back and congratulating her quite loudly. Hogun nodded his agreement with the sentiment, the ghost of a smile on his face. They both turned to stare warningly at Fandral as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Congratulations," he said first, and Sif had hope that, if his opinion had not changed, he at least had the sense to keep quiet about it. "I believe you have made a very good match, however little sense it might make to me. He seems very content to play along with this game."

"You will be careful what you say next," Hogun growled low at him, "or I will see you removed from the palace."

"Please," Fandral said. "I am saying nothing that is not true. They are a good match, and I wish them well. But I think that, sooner or later, we will see the true nature of this marriage. We will see Sif fall back on his strength."

"And if I do? There is nothing wrong with that," Sif answered defiantly.

"No? But you call him wife. I think perhaps you can do only one or the other."

Volstagg hrumphed and glared at Fandral. "Nothing of the sort, my friend. You are entirely mistaken."

"How say you, then, a warrior in good standing, who in a household should be strong?"

"Both," the larger warrior answered without hesitation. "Fandral, you are a fool to believe anything else. I think if you had to bear children, you would not be so dismissive of the strength required of a wife."

Fandral shook his head in bewilderment. "But what has that got to do with anything? At least I assume that man will not be bearing Sif's children."

Volstagg rolled his eyes.

"He would if he could," Sif told them. "But I do not hold that lack against him." She smiled defiantly, refusing to be brought out of temper, today of all days. "Not every bride can bear children, but it is no measure of their worth."

"What is this madness!" Fandral said, eyes wide. "Men saying they are brides, and - are those two fellows dancing?!" He waved his hand in the direction of Tony and Loki, who were twirling their way across the floor.

"They are a very sweet couple," Sif said fondly. "You didn't notice when you were on Earth?"

Fandral sighed. "I give up. The realms have gone mad."

"That is wise," said Volstagg. "My friend, do not try to deny the people of Earth their right to be perverse. It hardly ever works out well. Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to go find someone to dance with, myself. Sure you won't oblige?" Volstagg held out his hand to his friend with a badly hidden smirk. Fandral glared at him. "Your loss," he said, walking away.

"Leave, Fandral," Sif said now, and there was steel in her tone. "Your opinions are not welcome here."

Fandral could see no point in staying, after that. Hogun escorted him out.

Once he was gone, Sif returned to her new wife's side, banishing doubt and despair in favor of celebration.

* * *

A/N: see my story Stark vs Colbert to read the mentioned interview.


	5. Dreams Gifts Transformations Worlds

**More Than Heroes**

**Chapter 5: Dreams; Gifts; Transformations; Worlds**

Steven was, of course, keeping respectable pace with his drinking among the Asgardian company, but staying nearly sober. For the first time he was very happy about his inability to get drunk, because he had no interest in forgetting or losing focus on any of this.

He danced with Sif, both of them exuberant and quick long after the majority of the humans had bowed out, Darcy complaining of aching feet, Clint, that he was bored, and an extremely drunk Tony being dragged away by Joshua before he could say anything embarrassing, incriminating, or both. Bruce and Peter were actually engrossed in a conversation in one corner, something about redesigning one of the spectrometers in the tower to make it easier to use, although the last time Steve had come around they'd been talking about food. Steve had a sudden worry that one of them might try to sneak a golden apple back to Earth to analyze, despite the dire warning they'd received from Thor. But Peter was too honest, he reassured himself, and Bruce too wise. Then Natasha came around to get them and take them to the Bifrost, as the others were ready to be home.

Steve had no idea how long it had been, and he didn't care a great deal, either, but he was starting to think that he might be done with the large crowds of people, and that it would be nice to be alone with Sif.

"You think the party might start to wind down soon?" he asked her as he looked around at the still steadily drinking and dancing Asgardians.

"Oh, no," she said. "Not until at least dawn. But I think perhaps we should leave them to it and go to our home."

"Our home," he said, smiling helplessly. "I like the way that sounds."

So they left, taking enough of the warm glow of celebration with them that they hardly felt the cool night air as they traveled, both of them on one horse for the short ride to the house that was Sif's, now theirs. It wasn't enormous, or entirely made of gold, to Steve's relief. Sif, true to her word, lifted him easily and carried him through the door. The walls, from the inside, were a mixture of smooth bluish stone, tile (and here there was some gold embellishment), and woven screens that mixed wood and metal.

Sif smiled at Steve, as she set him down inside the house, and Steve was suddenly very conscious of her presence and her proximity and the fact that they were alone and newly married, and he was reminded of being the skinny little kid trying to ask his superior officer to dance. He blushed.

"My beautiful, virginal wife," Sif said, taking his face in her hands. Steve looked to see humor in her eyes, but found none. Instead, there were the beginnings of tears. "How could I have found someone so perfect. You are everything I wanted and everything I did not think to ask for. I think I will spend eternity thanking you for existing."

"Sif," Steve said, then couldn't think of what to say next. At this moment he loved her more than ever. She had been the consummate warrior at the ceremony, even through the feast, where her golden gown did nothing to stop her from looking fierce and dangerous. But just when he was feeling unsure, inadequate, she showed him this, all the tenderness she had to hide from Asgard, all the regard she had for him.

He leaned down to kiss her, and even this wasn't something he'd done a lot of, but there was a warmth to this that made the clumsiness fade away, and also Sif clearly knew what she was doing, because before he knew what was happening, her tongue was on his, stroking it, drawing it out, and he just wanted to be inside her in every way possible, and he wasn't worried any more because he was too busy being in love with Sif and feeling her against him and in his arms and mostly under his lips and tongue.

He wasn't even conscious of the fact that she was unbuttoning his jacket until she was pushing it back off of his arms, and he could feel the smooth press of her fingers against his shoulders, now covered only by the thin material of his shirt. He let the jacket fall to the floor, hardly sparing it a thought as he continued to explore Sif's mouth.

She was definitely the one in charge here, and Steve felt grateful for that, because he was overwhelmed and disoriented and in a haze of delightful feelings. He didn't know when he'd gotten to be laying on the bed with his shirt unbuttoned, but with Sif's mouth brushing whisper-soft against the skin of his chest, it didn't seem to matter.

Her lips drifted lower, pressing softly into the skin of his belly as she unfastened his pants, and her hands brushed against him through the fabric. Every sensation was sharp and clear and yet he felt completely unable to do anything except lie there and take it in, not lost at all, in fact found, held to the bed by the sheer force of the knowledge that this was where he was meant to be. All he could do in response was to pet her head and shoulders (like satin and silk under his touch, but so much stronger, he knew), and speak her name, reverently, over and over.

She tugged at his clothes and at last her fingers found the naked skin of his penis, and he gasped. The motion of her hands was everything, too much and not enough, dangerous and reassuring, bewilderingly new with every moment and yet grounding and steady.

"Sif, Sif, oh," the sounds tore out of him, strangled-sounding with the sheer tension between extremes. He thought there could be nothing more... anything, that this was the pinnacle of experience, the most exquisite wanting. But then, in one motion of her head, he was drowned in so much more.

He came apart, his words unraveling into gasping cries, and as her tongue began moving, he could only cling to her and make little, aborted movements, moving his hands from her hair to her shoulders and back again, moving his hips the little distance she would allow him to.

It was like fire, and water, and everything that moved or burned or crested, the sound of many voices raised in song, the crackle of pine branches thrown on a fire, the flow and burn of alcohol in the throat. It was like every sensation layered over each other and combined expertly to make the one most beautiful thing that could be wrung from everything.

_She_ was everything.

She was everywhere, enveloping him, her hands sliding across his ribs, and her mouth moved with too-soft-too-much pressure, up and then down again, and when he came it was like dying, losing his breath and his will and trembling uncontrollably, except instead of fading away, everything was crisp and bright and _present; she_ was there; the immediacy of the moment hit him like a truck, and a startled cry escaped him, all pleasure but half pain as the pressure of her mouth became altogether too much.

Her mouth gave one last ripple as she swallowed around him, and he made an agonized noise, squirming under her as she pulled away with a satisfied sigh. He breathed again, and it was like breathing in the color blue, a cloudless autumn sky, with the way it arched over everything, calm, undifferentiated, passive and yet no less than glorious. He breathed again, and closed his eyes, not finding the impetus in himself to move but filling with joy and a final, softer flood of pleasure when Sif shifted up the bed and pressed her warm, soft body against his side and chest.

"Sif," he breathed. "Sif." No message occurred to him but her name, because her name meant her, and she meant everything. As he regained a little will to move, at least enough to shift his fingers, he tangled them in the hair at the side of her neck, moved them lazily across her skin. "I love you so much, Sif," he said, tugging her closer at last and wrapping both arms around her and feeling the heat in his chest brighten and roll in response to her breathing.

"I love you," Sif told him in return, voice raw with a mixture of strong emotion and a slighty abused throat. "I've never known anything more surely than I know that now." She propped herself up to look at him, staring, taking in the sight of him, hair more disheveled than she'd ever seen it and cheeks and eyes bright with sex, with pleasure and with love.

After a time the movement of his hands grew more steady, and after just gazing at her for several minutes, he spoke again.

"What can I do for you?" he asked. "Can I make you feel like that? Teach me."

Sif smiled, all at once satisfied and proud, and loving and sweet. "I will. I will teach you a thousand things about pleasure, but you have taught me everything I know about love. This is already the best of all the nights I have lived. I am not at all eager for this moment to come to an end. For now, all I want is this contentment, this closeness. For now," she said, "just kiss me."

Kissing was different, in this state, still as placid as the cloudless blue sky. He felt that every motion of their lips could take an aeon, and he would not mind; in fact, he would welcome it. She was his, he was hers, and this light contentment on which they floated stretched out to the horizons.

But within the hour, he felt desire rise up in him again, and his lessons truly began.

Sif lay below him, and she guided his hands, up her muscular belly and up to the soft skin of her breasts, in small circles so that his fingertips brushed her nipples over and over again, and then she pulled his hands down to press into the soft flesh, and as she did this, she closed her eyes to savor the sensation. He watched her, and leaned down to kiss her at the same time, which made her moan and shift under him, and Steve smiled at the evidence that she was beginning to enjoy herself in the same way.

Then she repositioned him, his lower half off to one side and his chest pressed down against hers, pulled close by one of her arms as they continued to kiss.

Her other hand guided his down, past the very slight outward curve of her belly. She taught him which places were good to touch, how fast, and how hard, and his fingers, so clever with a pencil, did not fail him here. Soon he found himself with two damp fingers deep inside her and a thumb working against her clit, and he was very glad of his superhuman endurance, as she was only beginning to make little uncontrollable noises along with his movements.

"Kiss me again," she breathed, eyes shining, and as he looked at her, he wondered how she could have gotten even more beautiful without his noticing.

He kissed her deeply, drawing more sounds from her throat, and she clutched at his shoulders, and then her lips ceased to move against his as she breathed harshly and her eyes went wide and wild, and he felt the muscles inside her ripple as his fingers continued to press into her. It made him dizzy to think of how it would feel on other, more sensitive parts of his skin.

A wail broke from her and she held him tighter, all the muscles in her body seeming to awake at once, as if she was coming alive against him. It was beautiful, and profound, and he didn't know what was going to happen next but he needed her more than ever.

At last she went limp, and he removed his hand, stroking her face and looking into her eyes. She met them, desire still alight in her face. "Now," she said firmly, though her voice was breathy. "I would have you inside me now."

He barely hesitated, but kissed her once more first, and then, shaking with the intensity of his desire, he opened her with his fingers and slid home.

He gasped, shaking still, falling onto his elbows on either side of her, his hair bushing her breasts as his head drooped. He couldn't form syllables, he could barely breathe - though the sound of his breaths was loud - there was so much to _feel_.

He had to - he _had_ to _move._

He jerked hard into her, surprising himself, but it was - beyond anything he'd ever felt.

"You will not hurt me," she reassured him. "Do what you will. Do that again. Please." The earnestness of that request banished the last of his reservations, and he slammed into her, layer after layer of pleasure washing over him, constantly surprised that he could feel any more than he already did.

She cried out again, hands wrapped tight around his upper arms and nails digging into his skin, the sounds yearning, then overwhelmed, then, as her grip softened, trailing off into pleased sighs that were almost coos.

Everything was perfect, so perfect, pouring into him like molten metal, glowing-hot and heavy and shedding sparks, and then he was full with it, and a roar escaped him, starting low and growing with the force of his climax until he was screaming, hips twitching, because he could not stand to move but nor could he stand to stop. Her hands tightened again on his arms and her legs wrapped around his waist, making him still in the most wonderful way. The exquisite tension drew out like a wire, stretching impossibly, and he poured out all he was into it, breaking it at last, and, with a whine full of incredulity and satisfaction, he collapsed on top of Sif.

It was all he could do to breathe as the incredible contentment spread before him again, and Sif's hands were moving across him now, lazy arcs across his shoulders and soft clawlike incursions into his hair.

He was home.

Home on Asgard, home with Sif, on this bed, all cream linen and timber, in this house, which felt like theirs.

His fingers slid across the soft skin by his face, and he was perfectly, simply content.

* * *

The next day, back in New York, they went to the courthouse again, with Bruce and Natasha as witnesses, because they shared the qualities of being unobtrusive and not completely hung over. Sif wore street clothes she'd obtained at some point during her weeks on Earth, a blouse with some drape to it in a deep red color, black jeans and boots. The elegant utility of it suited her very well, and he followed her example, dressing in something he liked very much but that wasn't too formal - a blue sweater and grey pants.

The officiant read a short ceremony for them, congratulated them, and then there was just a bit more paperwork to do.

Steve signed the register, bouncing just a little with joy as he handed his spouse the pen. She took it, grinning back at him, and she wrote, strong and sure, 'Sif Rogers.'

He blinked. "You sure?" he asked.

"Yes," said Sif. "If anyone asks me, I will tell them that my beloved has kindly given me his name, and I bear it with pride, because it is a symbol of standing against unjust things, and a token of our partnership. It is a warrior's name, after Hrodgar, a great and trustworthy warleader who lived long ago on your world and fought beside Odin Allfather, who speaks highly of him. All will know that I am a warrior of Asgard, and that taking the name of Rogers only adds your strength to my own. I will make them know."

He smiled. "We will."

* * *

They had to sign a lot of papers before they even stepped into the hotel proper - warnings and waivers, evacuation procedures, agreements of various kinds - but finally they had their passes. As they stood in the Earth-based outer lobby of the hotel, Tony explained to them that their booking was for ten days and lunar sunrise would be on the fifth day.

He introduced them to Jasper, the AI who ran the hotel and who sounded suspiciously similar to Loki. Steve smiled as the voice greeted them warmly. They approached the doorway to the inner lobby, which was semicircular and windowless, but large and full of plants, so that it didn't bring to mind the claustrophobia of a pressurized cockpit or bring one face to face with the fact that this wasn't a normal place on Earth - except, of course, for the very reduced force of gravity.

Sif laughed in delighted surprise as her first step through the hotel doorway caused her to bound into the air, and Steve just looked on for a moment, transfixed at the sight of her joy, and the way, as she drifted back down to the floor, her black hair floated up around her like fronds of seaweed.

"All right, lover boy, don't hold up the line," Tony said finally, clapping him on the shoulder. "This facility has a single umbilical to Earth, not counting my lab door, that's private. So don't stand there to gawk when you've literally already gotten a room."

Steve finally turned his head to look at Tony. "Oh, right, sorry," he said, face red and flustered. He promptly tripped over his own feet, fell through the door, and began a slow eerie descent, like the ones that herald waking up from a dream.

Tony laughed, and grabbed him, pulling him upright with one hand while the other was braced on the grab bar at the side of the doorway. Tony then began to bound efficiently across the room as if he did this every day, which he probably did. He headed towards the wall opposite, the straight one, where the reception desk stretched out.

Steve and Sif followed more clumsily, laughing at each other and themselves, attempting to catch each other's hands on the way past, and first failing, and then succeeding, which spun them both into an odd and unexpected trajectory that had them spiralling towards the floor once more. But like balloons, they barely impacted the floor before bouncing and beginning to float upwards again. They had lost themselves in laughter when they heard Tony above them.

"Seriously. Room. Keys. Take them. Not that you'd actually need 'em, Jasper can open doors for you, but focus groups said not everyone likes to be reminded that a smart-mouthed AI is watching their every move. So, key cards."

He held out the plastic slips in their direction. Grinning like fools, they each took one, and then scrambled to their feet, bouncing with every motion. Tony began leading them away, still chattering, his pride in his creation clear. "There are two restaurants on the garden level, six on the main levels, and of course room service, and most of the food is cooked on good ol' Midgard and brought through, but the garden level places and the sushi place all prepare in front of you, performance art kind of thing, you'll want to try out one of those at least once. Gym is always open, Cirque du Soleil just started up their show here of course, locally mined glassblowing demonstrations are fun, it's amazing what they can do with just the chemical variation present in the rock here in terms of colors. Outdoor suit walks open up at lunar sunrise on Tuesday. Be careful with the bathrooms until you get used to them, water behaves differently at point one six gee, and remember, ask Jasper if you need anything at all, or if you just want to bug 'im, that's what he's there for. I'll get back to you about team dinner next Sunday, still trying to convince Bruce that he's not going to kill everyone just by setting foot on this awesome rock, I know he's been dying to come up. All right, here we are, this one's yours, enjoy."

A door stood before them, and Steve slid his key card into the slot at its side, pushing down the handle when the indicator went green (he _had_ stayed in a hotel during the two years and change he'd lived on modern Earth).

"All right, that's my cue," Tony said, turning away. "Congrats, kids, have fun." And he left, and they went into the room, in which only a small lamp was lit, while the space was dominated by the window, all blackness and stars. They each put down their small bags and stared out at it.

"The stars look different from up here," Steve said. "They don't twinkle so much. They look more... permanent."

Sif smiled, pulling him close, and they drifted towards the window. "The stars look different from every world," she said, "though most of them are the same stars. The flavor of the world changes them. And yes, here, they do seem... harder, more unchanging. But still beautiful."

Steve wrapped his arms tighter around her, sighing contentedly. "I've stood on three worlds in two days, all with things I never dreamed of seeing when I was a kid. And still, all I've wanted to look at the whole time is you. You're incredible, Sif. Strong and beautiful, and everything you do is like a dance. I can't believe how lucky I've gotten."

Sif smiled back at him. "You know I think the same of you," she said.

They fell into a kiss, and this felt fresh and strong to Sif, the way everything narrowed to the touch between them, hands and arms enfolding, mouths joined. The way the ground here refused to pull at them here was more potent than any magic to take away the weight of life, the discomfort of their trials, and leave them free, leave them only for each other.

Sif held him close with one arm and began unbuttoning his shirt with the other hand, eager but lazy, just glad to be here with him and to have her knuckles brushing against his chest, lower with every button. Steve's fingers dug into her soft flesh through her shirt, and that strong but gentle grip reminded her of the previous night, and she moaned, anticipating what was to come. Steve pulled away from her mouth for a moment to whisper in her ear.

"This time," he said, "you're going to come first."

Everything was new again, after hundreds of years and dozens of partners. The wonder in Steven's voice, the caring and respect that it was founded on, these she was not used to, and the lightness of their bodies in this played havoc with any expectation she might have had of how any of this would feel, how they should go about giving each other pleasure. She found that she was enraptured by the moment, the simple touches they were exchanging, and she was very content to stay in this state of simple, strange, joyous suspension, and let Steven lead the dance this time.

They kissed and clung to each other, their bodies more solid and real than anything else around them. He was becoming accustomed more quickly to the strangeness of moving on this world, and he held her easily up against his own body, and she wrapped her legs tight around his waist because she could, and as he pulled her shirt from her shoulders, he began to suck and bite at the skin there, first her neck and then down the curve of her shoulder, and the sensation in such isolation had an intensity she would not have believed.

For him, standing there holding Sif in his arms as if she were light as a feather and feeling all her limbs wrapped around him, she was a treasure, an armful of everything good and precious and beautiful, and he sighed into her hair, wanting this moment to go on forever. If he had her in his arms like this, he would never want for anything else. Her hair smelled of rich wine and chocolate, and he buried his face in it, brushing at her neck with his lips, then kissing in earnest, and at the sound she made then, he tightened his arms around her, loving that she had taught him this treasure trove of knowledge about her body, every inch of it, as if she were a musical instrument, and if he touched the right parts in sequence, he could make her sing.

He moved one hand to her breast, brushing his fingers across the nipple lightly at first, and then, as it rose, nearly pinching, then he put his whole hand over the flesh of her breast and pressed steadily, feeling the elastic give of it and not being able to hold back a whimper of his own. Her legs tightened around him, pressing their still-clothed hips together, and she brought their mouths together as well in a moment of sweet connection, everything brightening briefly as their bodies aligned with each other.

They were both panting by the time they separated long enough to remove the rest of their clothing, tearing some of it in their haste and uncoordination in this gravity, and they both laughed breathlessly against each other, not caring at all.

Steve drew her back into his arms and kissed her tenderly again, then, to her surprise, he loosened his arms to turn her around, pulling her back flush to his chest. He lay back on the bed this way, bouncing lightly, and returned one hand to her breast, continuing to tease the nipple. The other hand worked its way down to her pelvis, fingers mapping the territory before finding and pressing on her clit, making her gasp.

His lips pressed against her neck, and his fingers continued to move, and she floated with nothing to apply herself to, not even Steven's pleasure or his instruction in sensual things. There was nothing to give her focus to but the work of his hands and mouth, the shivers of pleasure they gave her.

His fingers continued to circle her clit until she was squirming in his arms, making little moans of pleasure and asking for more. Only then did he slide his fingers lower, opening her, and then tilted her hips back so that he could slide into her from the back.

Oh, and what a good idea that was! He held one hip in a solid grip as he thrust, less uncontrolled this time, every push pressing on the best possible places, and his other hand was still on her clit, helping to pull her close, so that the force of every thrust was felt there, as well. She gasped and sobbed with the beauty of it, the pure pleasure, and against all odds, on this world, it was unlike anything she had ever felt.

She did come first, though Steve followed her closely, taking great gulping breaths at her neck and holding her so tight, so close, and there was nothing else in all the worlds but each other, their breath, and their love.

* * *

They lay tangled for a long time, wrapped tightly around each other, the low gravity meaning their was no danger of their limbs falling asleep.

"I can't even explain how happy I am right now," Steve murmured into her ear.

She smiled lazily back, kissing him lightly. "I believe I know how you feel," she replied.

"Good," he said. "You're all I care about right now. My family. My partner, my spouse... as strange as it is to say it, my husband."

Sif frowned a little. "You don't have to say it when we are alone. We are equals."

He shook his head. "There shouldn't be anything lesser about being a wife. Every couple are equals, even if they haven't realized." He laughed a little. "If there is any difference in the meaning of the words 'husband' and 'wife' besides who can bear children, I guess it's sort of a role description. Well, that's an old-fashioned way of looking at it on Earth, I guess. But on Asgard that's still how it is. And I'm going to cook for you, and keep your house clean and pretty, and I'll care for our kids if we have any. Because I want to, and that's how it should be. But also because I agreed to be your wife, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with that on any world."

She smiled softly. "Then I encourage you," she said. "Any battle you wish to fight, I will stand by your side."

* * *

They stayed in their room for the first two days, just them and the stars, until on the third day even their very athletic version of laying about was making Sif restless, and Steven agreed.

"We've barely seen this place," he said. "Tony said something about a garden level, and a gym? But the part we walked through looked like a shopping mall. And I don't even know what a Cirque du Soleil is, but Tony seemed to think it was worth seeing. Let's go find something we haven't seen before."

First they made a circuit of the main levels, the huge ring of shops and attractions that surrounded the lobby in the center of the compound. The rooms with their windows on the moon surface lined the outside, as the map kiosks told them, and the public areas with good views were on the garden level, above them. Steve had seen enough malls to be comfortable with the concept, but everything here was unique and surprising, the way things and people moved, and there were many people.

Steve got out his small travel sketchpad of course, putting down on paper impressions of what he found interesting, how people moved, their expressions when unexpected things happened, and of course Sif's magnificent face and the movements of her hair as she drifted back towards the floor after each step. After a while they retreated from the more crowded areas up into the garden level, where a series of smaller rooms full of the soft shapes of plants meant that even if there were many people here as well, the sight and sound of them was not nearly so overwhelming.

Many of the plants were food crops, some merely ornamental, and quite a few were both, like the Japanese apricot that on Earth would be a weeping tree, but here had an oddly tentacular shape, and the gigantic melons, which took advantage of the precisely controlled conditions to grow steadily bigger and the low gravity to keep their shapes and not collapse or develop flat patches. Grapes here grew in oddly round bunches, and all the plants seemed slightly askew in their growth patterns, but they'd been arranged with an expert artistic eye, so it all looked strange but very appealing.

Some plants were impossibly tall, spindly and delicate looking, and one room took advantage of this to create the illusion of a fairyland, in which all the guests were the size of insects with grasses and wildflowers towering above them. Steve spent a long time drawing in there, while Sif simply watched, looking up through the arched skylight at the stars, though they were not so visible from this brightly lit room.

After a time she became bored and lifted Steve bodily from his spot on the ground, which he didn't actually notice until he looked up from his page and the perspective had changed completely, at which he laughed. "Sorry, I got caught up. The images here are just so... different. Time to move on to something else?"

"If you don't mind," she said. So they went in search of something more to her taste.

On their way back through the mall area, they saw a woman streaking across the gallery and into the hotel lobby, yelling, "Look! I'm a B-52's album!" This made Steve blush, but considerably less than it would have previously. Sif merely laughed, which made Steve laugh, alhough neither of them got the reference.

After asking around a little bit, they decided to see the Cirque show, which started in half an hour. So they got tickets and then got lost in a toy store which was full of things like yo-yos and gliders and hula hoops and lots of other toys that were simple, but that changed radically with gravity, and that Steve recognized the use of.

The show was incredible, because although there was some clowning and distraction of the type Steve recognized from his trained monkey days, the centerpiece of the experience was a group of highly skilled acrobats stretching what could be done with simple equipment and creative choreography. There were bands of fabric that flowed through the space, and metal hoops, and a surprising amount of creativity with what looked like simple chairs, but what struck Steve the most was when some of them strapped large weights to their feet and walked around just as if they were back on Earth. The contrast was something to behold. Steve guessed that if one of those weights were back on Earth, not even he could lift it.

Later there was a bizarre segment with dancers with carefully done up hair who grabbed each other and threw each other about in impossible spirals, sometimes by the hair.

Too soon, everyone was filing out of the theater again, and they had to find something else to occupy themselves with.

Inspired by the show, they went in search of the gym, to try a little bit of just moving around at first. Then they sparred, which went hilariously badly at first, and they were collapsing in gales of laughter soon after they began. But they kept at it, and after a while, they began to develop a feel for what was practical to attempt at 0.16 g. There was a lot of jumping and wide-swinging kicks, and anything more close range devolved very quickly into grappling. Then grappling devolved into kissing, and soon they were well and truly over their restlessness and ready to go back to their room.

They spent the fourth day in their room again, alternating between genuine wrestling bouts and grappling with an entirely different aim in mind. After breakfast on the fifth day, Jasper interrupted a contented silence to tell them, "You may be interested to know that lunar sunrise will be beginning in around twenty minutes."

They settled in at the window to watch. It was slow to begin, only darkness and stars, as far as they could tell, for several minutes after Jasper's second notification. Then Steve saw the first hints of light hitting the tips of the lunar highlands outside the window to their right. Just jagged shapes of light against the darkness.

Then the first sliver of the sun appeared, quite suddenly, on the horizon to their left. It was bright, filtered only by dust and the reflective layer embedded in the windows, and the sky around it remained black, the stars dimming in contrast. They continued to watch the landscape as it changed shape, the pale jagged patches of light on the highlands continuing to grow, and a haze of grey creeping ever so slowly across the regolith spread out before them.

It was a slow process, the sun taking thirty times longer to escape the moon's horizon than the Earth's, but Steve couldn't tear his eyes away, and Sif just watched him, watched his face in the changing light. Blue eyes, huge and full of wonder, drinking in the sight of sunrise on a new world.

"I want to watch you see new things," Sif said. "I want to take you to Alfheim and see your face as you watch the elven cloud dancers. I want to show you Hel's library, a million pictures from a hundred worlds. I want to see your face when -" Her voice caught here. "- when you meet our children."

And then he turned those wondering eyes on her, every bit as fascinated and in awe as he had been about seeing his sun hit the dirt of a new world for the first time.

"I love you," he said, expression not changing. "I can't imagine anything more amazing than that."

Sif's heart cried out that, yes, this was what she wanted, _he_ was what she wanted. She launched herself in his direction, a motion which sent them both tumbling onto the bed, and they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed as if they wanted to seal themselves together and never separate.

* * *

"Come on, Brucey, it's the deep lab. It's under half a football field's worth of moon rock. Nothing's going to happen. You know you want to come."

Bruce sighed. "It's, uh... it's not just the danger factor, which you can't play down, by the way. Hulk really doesn't like enclosed spaces, and he can usually find his way out of them. In this case, that means smashing his way through a resort hotel full of thousands of people and surrounded by nothing but silica dust and vacuum. That's not exactly low risk. And don't you dare even mention the waivers, this isn't about _legal_ risk. But no, there's another factor. I'd really rather not have an incident there, even if it is sturdy enough, and there's a certain... level of excitement involved in this, that I'm not sanguine about keeping myself in control through."

Tony's smile slowly widened. "Oh, you totally have a science boner for my moon base."

Bruce chuckled helplessly. "That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

Tony shook his head. "Enough with the 'I can't have it, I want it too much' bull crap. Not good for the soul. Come on, live a little."

Bruce sighed. "Tony, I only live here because I trust you to keep me from doing anything really cataclysmic. You and the others. I can't exactly go anywhere that there's no one to hurt. I've tried. Being alone is bad for my control, I've accepted that. But I can at least keep away from places where one wrong blow can kill thousands of people. And don't tell me I'm overestmating the Other Guy's strength, because I'm not."

"Maybe not, but you're severely underestimating the safety measures I built into the base. Say you breach pressure containment. Pressure doors can seal off any area, even the rooms on the garden level. Evacuation procedures are triple redundant. Say you manage to take out all the active radiation shielding generators. The window plastic is rated for the radiation for short periods, and there's mass shielding between the garden level and the rest of the compound. Short version, you're not gonna take out the place with one blow, no matter how big. But you know all that, so that's not the point. The point is, you don't know how to handle something this _good_ happening to you. And that? I can't just let that go."

Tony looked Bruce in the eye as he continued. "Don't promise to stay for dinner. Just say you'll step through the door. And if you have to leave again right away? The door's gonna stay open, Bruce." Tony put his hand on the doctor's shoulder. "It's not a cage, Big Guy. It's not a trap. Okay? I just want you there."

Bruce sighed. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

Tony smirked. "Doesn't seem likely."

Bruce thought about what he'd told Steve, what he promised Captain America he'd think about.

"Fine. I'll step through the door."

Tony clapped him on the back. "Excellent! I'll save a place for you at the table."

Bruce made a face that was half cringe, half smile, and watched Tony leave the room before getting back to his work.

* * *

On the last day, Steve and Sif went poking around the gallery again, finding everything they hadn't yet seen and filling up every last corner of their minds - as well as Steve's sketchbook and a second one he had had to buy - with new and interesting things, half-familiar things, things just slightly but distinctly different than they usually were. Steve began to wonder just how many times he was going to feel that he'd somehow jumped forward in time.

But at least they found one thing that, to both of them, seemed simple and commonsense and reminiscent of the past.

Glassblowing worked similarly here to the way it did on Asgard - Sif had seen the artisans at work - and presumably on Earth, but the spinning to compensate for gravity was slower, and more glass stayed on the tube without problems. So the objects that took form were huge, delicate-looking bubble-like constructions or flowing forms full of motion, but judging by their thickness, they would actually prove quite solid. And heavy, once they were returned to Earth.

In the attached shop, they sold many things, like a chair made out of half of a huge glass bubble and fitted with padding. Here, it was pretty easy to lift, for a chair, but its marked shipping weight was enormous.

There was also a life-size sculpture of an elephant which would under no circumstances fit through the door back to Earth. It was a pale, translucent cream color decorated with gemlike spots in every color of the rainbow. When Steve saw it, he burst out laughing, and then had to wait several minutes to calm down enough to explain the joke. He went from the kings of Siam to the white elephant sales he'd seen in his childhood, and then somehow got onto the subject of economics, which was interesting because of their vastly different perspectives more than any real knowledge either of them had on the subject.

Sif had never paid all that much attention to any of the artisans on Asgard; as she said, she didn't need to know how a sword was made in order to swing it. But it occurred to her now that craftsmen were important to many aspects of life, and that decoration was merely a side embellishment, and after all, a pleasant one, as flyting was an embellishment to feasting.

So Sif saw the glassblowers working with new eyes, and watched it for hours. It was something that Sif would not have had patience for before, seeing decoration as frivolous. And although she still preferred the more obviously communicative arts, like portraiture, she was beginning to have her mind opened to the possibilities of things that were merely beautiful colors and shapes communicating important things like passions, anger, ambition, joy, love.

As a warrior showed off their skill, not just on the battlefield, but in flyting, storytelling and boasting, so a craftsman showed their heart not just by the fact that the glass held water, but also by the shape, color and texture.

Steve watched her, this time. "Not bored yet?" he asked, at the beginning of the third hour.

"No," she said. "You have changed the way I see. I see skill, where once I would have seen merely labor. I see art, where before I only saw trappings."

He smiled with wonder at this speech, drawing her close and kissing her, soft and sweet, keeping aware of the crowd around them.

"I'd love to stay longer," he said, "but we're going to be late for dinner if we don't hurry."

She sighed into his neck, realizing that he was right. Then she smiled at him. "A few more wonders before we return to our lives," she said. "This place is full of wonders."

They went through to the lobby, and through a door marked "Employees Only" that Jasper assured them was the correct one. They went down the lab elevator all the way to the bottom, until they came out into Tony's private workshop. He was there, grinning, arms wide.

"Ah, the guests of honor are here! Getting good use out of my hotel? How'd you like it?"

Steve smiled back. "It's pretty amazing," he said. "Maybe even better than flying cars."

"Thank you, Tony," Sif said, beaming at him. "It has been a long time since I have experienced anything quite so novel and freeing as this place."

"What can I say, I know my resort hotels. Changed a few variables, doesn't change the structure of the whole equation."

Darcy laughed. "You really don't hesitate to take credit for things, do you?"

Tony rolled his eyes at her. "Picking a location is always going to be the most important variable. I just took the opportunity to build on the most unique location humans have ever seen."

Darcy shook her head at him, but she was having too much fun to be seriously annoyed.

Thor and Natasha were sparring nearby, Clint and Loki looking on in fascination. Peter, Bruce, Jane and Gwen were, of course playing with the equipment; specifically, at the moment, they were using pressurized air jets to affect their own motions.

"All right, dinner time," Tony called, clapping his hands. "Promise you can play with Daddy's toys again after."

Clint rolled his eyes at that, but everyone else was genuinely excited enough about being here not to take offense.

They sat down at a huge table that probably hadn't been there yesterday and probably wouldn't be there again tomorrow. All twelve of them fit along one side and the two ends, and there was a team of servers waiting along the other edge.

"Thanks for doing this, guys," Tony said to them. "I had to show everybody this, but not everyone is really comfortable being upstairs."

One of them nodded. "Of course, Mr. Stark."

What followed was, in essence, a slapstick routine, in which the servers washed vegetables (an interesting show in itself at 0.16 g) and cut them and arranged them, all the while pretending to be clumsy and absent-minded, with constant near misses that would have been disastrous on Earth, but here simply meant gentle bumps where there would have been splats, catches at the ends of slow falls, and several sprigs of parsley suspended in the air at any given moment, completely ignored, as if the servers had lost track of them.

Their plates slowly gained vegetables in a seemingly haphazard fashion, but actually they ended up with delicate constructions reminiscent of houses of cards. At the end, the parsley drifted gently down to settle on the peak of each tower.

The Avengers watched, entranced. At the end they applauded, and the vibrations caused their salads to slowly collapse into neat piles. Then the concoctions were dressed, and the servers took orders for the main course, out of a handful of choices they were prepared to make.

As they ate their salad, they watched the cooking, which involved considerably more open flame and less show of incompetence than the first course. It was all delicious, of course, and then the preparation of dessert was a graceful dance of fruit sculptures, whipped cream and chocolate.

The servers left, then, back up the elevator to the resort proper.

"See, Brucey, aren't you glad you decided to show up?"

"That was remarkable," Bruce replied, "but I really could have just set up a video conference for this."

"Not for the toys," Gwen said, looking at him with knowing, slightly mocking glee. "I was there. You were having a blast working out the physics of the air jets hands on. And, as the only person here who's a civilian and not somehow answerable to SHIELD, I can tell you officially that you are worth the risk. Wouldn't have been the same without you."

Bruce spluttered a little.

"Hey, you're gonna make me jealous," Peter whined jokingly. "I thought I was your favorite science geek."

Gwen shook her head and then pressed her lips together as if steeling herself to deliver bad news. "Sorry to tell you, but _I'm_ my favorite science geek," she said.

Tony laughed. "Now that is a position I can relate to. Got a favorite sorcerer too, though," he said, before Josh could make up his mind to deck him.

"Ooh, ooh, it's me, isn't it?" joked Darcy. Loki decided to deck her instead, and she flew out of her seat, laughing.

Natasha rolled her eyes, most of them laughed, and the whole room was full of a comfortable festivity, a feeling of family and love.

Sif decided that she liked this planet best of all.

Then Tony made an idea noise. Everyone looked at him warily. "Oh! Steve! Almost forgot. I brought you a little something, courtesy of the vultures known as the American press."

Steve warily took the newspaper Tony was holding out in his direction. It was a copy of the National Register, and across it was a picture of Steve and Sif walking out of the courthouse, hand in hand with goofy smiles on their faces. An inset from a different photo showed the detail of their wedding rings.

"Not a bad picture," he said, making Tony pout with his lack of reaction. But he was very used to publicity. Then he caught sight of the headline, and it made him laugh.

"Captain America marries alien, honeymoons on the moon!"

* * *

A/N: Open gates to Earth mean a full-pressure enclosure, and a nitrogen-heavy air mix. So open flame is feasible.


End file.
